


take it all away

by eliestarr



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-08
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-27 15:21:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/980488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliestarr/pseuds/eliestarr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a mistake--this thing they were doing. It was dangerous and stupid, and they both knew that. But it wasn’t something you could walk away from without consequences, without broken hearts and promises. Without someone vowing to do anything they could to make the pain go away--even if it meant losing everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. inevitable

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired partly by a past episode of Once Upon A Time, as well as a conversation with my Damian over Skype once while RP-ing. Set in a future (duh) AU, where Steph is Knightwing (as seen in Batgirl #24), and Damian is still Robin to Dick’s Batman.

**in-ev-i-ta-ble**   
**noun: a situation that is unavoidable**

* * *

She’s exhausted and cold and so very sore when they make it back to the cave. She doesn’t say a word as they haul themselves from the vehicle, and makes a beeline for the shower, wanting to rid herself of the blood and the grime that has nearly stained her to the bone. She knows that she probably shouldn’t be angry with him—he did, afterall, save her life tonight—but the fact of the matter is he was stupid and careless, and nearly got himself killed for her. And the worst part? It’s over the dumbest thing.

It’s because she freezes up whenever they meet him on the streets of Gotham, despite the fact that it’s a different guy under the mask, that it’s not the guy that lives on in her nightmares, retracing every scar he ever gave her. She can essentially laugh in the face of death itself, but when faced with him, she’s a pathetic mess, and she hates it. Hates it so much that her fist connects with the tiled bathroom wall just thinking about it.

The water washes away the filth on her skin, but not in her mind. It is not the first time she has wondered what little use she is to them, or why she’s stuck around this long. It’s not like she meant to, the night she came knocking after her father blew himself up and took her mom with him. She meant to say her peace and be on her way--not take residence in one of their many rooms. Not join the Dynamic Duo as a permanent gig, in a new suit and a new name, to put the past behind her. And certainly not to get as comfortable as she has--with everyone.

She shakes her head and tries not to think how everything has become so routine and so normal, how they’ve somehow scraped together some semblance of stable, the three of them, with Alfred. It’s been almost four years, and sometimes it scares her to think about it, because that’s just about the biggest commitment she’s ever made. The longest she’s ever worn a costume without screwing it up. She shuts the water off and snatches her towel from the counter as she steps out, sighing deeply. This level of comfort is why she briefly considers deviating from the direct path to her bedroom--which would be ridiculous, as she’s still in a friggen towel--and why, ultimately, once she’s snug in a faded tee and cotton shorts, she wanders back down the hall.

He’s sprawled across his bed in a pair of black track pants, and she’s reminded by how much space he takes that he’s grown quite a lot as of late. He’s lying flat on his back, eyes closed and feet bare and oddly vulnerable; and she thinks that if it weren’t for the cuts and scrapes still spiralling across his skin, he’d look like he didn’t have a care in the world. She leans against the doorway, hip cocked, and takes him in, watching the way his chest rises and falls evenly and the way that his fingers are curled against his stomach. Dick helped him wash the worst of the blood away at least, and there’s a bag of ice sitting melting on the bedside table next to him--and a bottle of bourbon next to it.

She smiles. That’s more like it.

She thinks he’s asleep, the way he’s stretched out with his face slack. He looks so serene--so peaceful--and she realizes she's never seen him like this. This calm and this relaxed and this...normal. As soon as she steps into the room, though, the image is ruined--his eyes open, and he blinks blearily up at her. The left one is bloodshot, puffy and sore--he’ll have a hell of a shiner by tomorrow--and high up on his cheekbones there are three neatly placed, white bandages, ones that are probably hiding stitches underneath. Dick’s work, of course; she knows damn well her hands wouldn’t have been steady enough for it.

He frowns at her then--and she’s not sure whether it’s her freshly showered state or just her presence in his room, but it’s gone quickly enough as the lines on his face smooth out again, leaving only a blank stare. He says nothing, maybe because he’s waiting for her to speak first, as she hasn’t said a word to him all night, or maybe he just doesn’t know what to say. So instead, he shifts subtly on the bed to make room. She restrains herself and doesn’t tilt her head, doesn’t question the open invitation, and instead slinks far enough into the room to snag the empty glass next to the bottle, the bottom of which is wet. She pours herself a glass and he watches her intently as she scoops some ice cubes from the bag to drop into it. It’s cold, and that’s something to focus on--something other than his eyes on her.

He pulls himself carefully into a sitting position, shifting until he can prop himself against the bare headboard. She doesn’t miss how long it takes him, or how the movement lacks his normal grace, but stays quiet. “How’re you?” he asks gruffly, finally breaking the lingering silence.

She shrugs, but it’s exhausted, not dismissive. It takes her quite a bit longer than he seems to want to answer the question, and it’s frankly because she doesn’t know how. More than half the answers would be wrong. “Still here,” she says, because that’s the most important thing. He looks away from her then, and wipes his hands tiredly over his face. He looks so old then, and she frowns, wondering not for the first time tonight just when the hell he grew up on her.

She closes the bag of ice, spinning it shut, and settles down in the gap he’s left by his side. Her hip just barely touches his, and if it pains him, he doesn’t show it--neither does he move away. Instead, he turns his head to watch her as she takes a long swig from the glass, ice cubes clinking in the amber liquid. He keeps watching her, silently, as she leans towards him; there are dark shadows beneath his eyes, and cuts where his face split under fists and feet. The cheap bourbon burns going down, settling like fire in her belly, and the bag is cold against her fingertips as she presses it gently against his cheek.

She should be angry with him, as she was when she stormed into the house after their patrol--but somehow seeing him like this; broken and injured, for her, it has begun to wash away. Instead of opening her mouth to tell him he was an idiot tonight and how dare he make her worry, she says simply: “Okay?” He graces her question with a grunt and a roll of his shoulder. She resists the urge to shake her head and hit him. “And your head?”

“Fine,” he responds.

It’s better than a grunt, at least.

She lifts the bag to see the skin underneath--battered and bruised, swollen and sore despite the ice she’s pressing against it--and it brings her closer to him. She can feel his breath, warm and a little sweet, against her skin, so she pulls back and takes another swig from her glass. The ice rattles against her teeth, cold against her lips and stinging the small cuts left by her teeth when she was too slow to duck. The bourbon burns all the way down her throat, settling warmly in her stomach, tingling in her veins; she’s not much of a drinker--at least, not this kind of alcohol--but she’s not buzzed yet. High on adrenaline, maybe, but not alcohol.

She doesn’t need to be, not when Damian keeps looking at her like that.

The way he has been, for a little while now. The way he was tonight. It’s something she’s done her best to ignore, to put off, to project upon a different meaning. But he almost died for her tonight, and that’s not something she can take lightly. Not anymore. Her eyes trail briefly to the half-empty bottle, and she wonders how much of it he’s had while Dick was stitching him up. She’s almost afraid to ask.

The same way she’s afraid to ask herself what keeps her here, in this manor. What keeps her from leaving them--from leaving him. She’s so afraid that she’s grown attached, of the dangerous things that could mean for him and for her and for them, that she’s been pretending it’s a non-issue. She takes another sip to keep her thoughts occupied and, when she swallows, Damian’s eyes track the movement of her throat. His fingers twitch, like he wants to reach for her, but the movement is slow; tentative enough that she could ignore it if she wanted to, let his fingers fall against the covers as though that was always where he was aiming.

She doesn't want to, not tonight, and hasn't for the longest time.

She leans towards him, slow enough that he could say something, if he wanted to. But when he doesn’t--when his eyes don’t ever even leave hers--her free hand cups his face. The taste of bourbon is on her tongue when she kisses him, and she’s not sure whether it comes from his mouth or hers, but it honestly doesn’t matter.

His palm settles against her waist, in the gap left between her cropped top and shorts; when his fingers flex, the calluses on them scratch roughly against her skin. She leans closer, careful to brace herself against the headboard and not his wounded shoulder. When his hand drifts up her back, slipping under the fabric of her top to slide his fingertips beneath her bra strap, her lips curl up against his mouth. Then she pulls back, and his eyes are closed, but his expression is no longer blank. He still looks tired, but there is color in his cheeks and a small, pleased smile playing around the corners of his mouth that wasn’t there before.

She forgets sometimes, that he’s all grown up now. Eighteen and just pushing six feet, he’s adopted Dick’s lean and athletic build, and she finds it hard not to admit that it looks good. The same way she finds it hard not to kiss away his smile, so she settles for running her fingers through his hair in a way that’s strangely comforting. Slowly, he opens his eyes, and watches her thoughtfully, his lips curving into a more familiar smirk. “Hey,” he says, his voice gravelly, a little horse.

“Hey,” she echoes back, a meaningless little sound that still means everything from I’m here to you’rehere and we both made it, covering everything between them. She leans in and kisses him again, pressing her lips against his cheek this time and taking care to avoid his cuts. She’s sure that the puckered white skin under his left eye will scar--and be a constant reminder of tonight, of how he saved her from the man that’s given her a handful of her own scars, both inside and out.

And she can tell by the look in his eyes that he wouldn’t take it back, what he did. He’d likely go a few more rounds with Black Mask if it meant the man never getting his hands on her again, and there’s a tightness in her chest just thinking about it--because he shouldn’t feel that way about her. He can’t. It’s stupid and dangerous and such a bad idea.

And she’s so through with thinking about it.

Her mouth moves along the hollow of his cheek, and he turns his head, moving into her touch and then touching their lips together again, soft and warm, moving slowly. He hisses a little when she presses her tongue against the cut Mask’s fist left on his lip, but he doesn’t pull away and so instead, she deepens the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding him steady. He doesn’t try to pull away--he’s too smart for that. He knows that whatever has caused her to give in after months of dancing around one another is not something he should be taking for granted. So it’s her choice to break the kiss as much as it is to initiate.

When she pulls away this time and he opens his eyes, the look in them has gone from warm to heated. It is her turn to smirk, not missing the way his eyebrows shoot up or the amused look that blossoms on his face’ it doesn’t do anything to tamp down the need in his eyes. She’s still grinning as she pushes herself up to reach the bottle, and spills some over the side of the glass as she pours. As it runs down one hand, she switches the glass to her other, and raises her hand to lick away the traces of bourbon clinging to her fingers. His hand twitches and his eyes track her, and she doesn’t smirk this time; instead it’s more a smile.

She settles back down onto the bed, swinging her legs to sit astride his lap, one knee on either side of his hips. As she shifts to get comfortable, his hands migrate to her lower back and stay there, warm. “Brown,” he all but grunts, “are you attempting to seduce me?”

She snorts, taking another swig from her glass. “Do I still need to?”

He doesn’t form the words of an answer, but instead pulls her closer and presses his lips to hers. His fingers move to the nape of her neck, holding onto her as he moves his mouth over hers. The glass slips free of her fingers, tumbling down between them, and he jerks away from her with a heartfelt ‘fuck’ that drags a giggle out of her. It feels good to laugh as she watches him fumble with the recovery of the glass, almost as if she’s forgotten how to over the last twenty-four hours.

Thankfully, the glass had been empty, and he half-tosses it onto the bedside table before returning to her. “Are you sure you want...,” he trails off, unwilling to say the words, to question her intentions with him. The line they’re walking is so fine and so dangerous, and they haven’t crossed it before, not like this. And he’s spent his whole life learning who to trust the hard way, she knows this. He’s leaving it open ended, leaving her room to walk away right now if she wants. And god, she probably should.

But she’s never been very good at following rules.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” A question for a question, dancing around and around the things they can’t--won’t--talk about. His hands snake around her waist, lower and lower until they can lift her forward and fully into his lap. So she can feel him beneath her. She rocks her hips once, hears his breath hitch and feels his fingers flex against her skin. His hands move upwards, skirting underneath the fabric of her shirt for an indecisive moment. Then she raises one eyebrow, and he sets his jaw, pulling it up over her head in one swift motion. He doesn’t waste any time once it’s gone; her t-shirt’s barely hit the floor before his fingers are easing their way underneath her sports bra.

He pulls it up over her head as well, and she leans in to kiss him as his hands settle on her bare breasts. His tongue traces along the line of her teeth before it meets hers, and she leans into his touch, her fingers curling in the hair at the nape of his neck. When her nails scratch lightly against his skin, he makes a sound halfway between a growl and a groan, and his fingers flex again, fingertips digging into her flesh, stopping just short of causing her pain. Her mouth breaks away from his, her lips tracing a path down over his chin to his neck where she nips at his throat, trailing kisses to his collarbone. As her teeth press more forcefully, he lets out a curse and she pulls away, grinning at him.

“My, my, Damian, the mouth on you...,” she muses, eyes dancing.

His fingers sink into her hair and tug her face to his until their lips are only inches apart, ignoring the gasp she lets out. “If you’d prefer to see what my mouth can really do...,” he growls, low and hot, and her heart rate spikes uncomfortably. Her fingers trail down his chest as he kisses her, being careful of his injuries as they find and settle on the strings of his pants. He fidgets slightly, and she opens her mouth, one smart quip or another at the ready, but he shakes his head and says simply; “Be quiet, woman,” kissing her for good measure.

He gives her a searching look when she steps back, but says nothing as she rises to her feet, hands moving briskly to the elastic of her shorts. He settles down and watches her, not being subtle at all, and she has half a mind to send him a glare, but there’s a light blush creeping onto his cheeks, and she finds herself smiling wistfully instead. In one fluid motion her shorts are off, and she’s moving back towards the bed, listening to his breathing shallow out and hang in his throat. She’s reaching for the string of his pants again when he catches hold of her face with both hands, his eyes meeting and holding hers seriously for a moment before he kisses her.

It’s slow and sweet, and it catches her off balance, because she’s so used to him being brash and aggressive in everything else he does. His fingers linger on her skin for a moment, and he gives her one final look--one final option to walk the hell away--but she ignores it. She wants this, wants him, and after a deep breath, she’s undoing his pants. He lifts his hips off the bed to help her pull them down, and she takes his shorts with them.

Despite his injuries and his aches, he reaches towards her and wraps his arms around her, lifting her back onto the bed in one fell swoop. When he kisses her, it isn’t soft and gentle, but demanding and wanting. As his hands roam over her body, she leans away from him and towards the nightstand, popping open the top drawer and finding just what she hoped might be there. She pulls one foil wrapper free and when her eyes settle on his again, his pupils are wide and black against his blue eyes. She tears it open with her teeth and offers it to him with one raised eyebrow.

He grunts, but takes it from her anyway, making quick work of putting it on. When he’s done, she pushes herself up, steading one hand on his good shoulder and lowering herself back down again, guiding him in with her other hand. She plans on doing this hard and fast, to work off the adrenaline and the alcohol still coursing through her system, but he clearly has other ideas, grabbing hold of her hips and slowing her pace. His lips find her throat, brushing gently over her skin, and his hands slide slowly along her waist, up her back, leaving her shivering and aching for something she doesn’t want to put into words. Not out loud.

She closes her eyes and goes with it, listening to the words he breathes against her skin--catching the ones in English, letting go the ones that aren’t. Despite how gentle and soft his touch and tone are, there are curses hidden amongst his words that are still distinctly him, grumpy and abrasive and Damian. She comes before he does; it creeps up on her slowly, slow rolling pleasure that sweeps her away before she’s even aware it’s there. He holds her through it, pressing kisses along her hairline while she clings to him, panting and shivering as the aftershocks rumble through her with each move of his hips.

Carefully, and slowly, he twists them until he’s on top of her, and with her mounting exhaustion, she hasn’t the mind to worry about his injuries. It doesn’t take much longer until he’s shuddering and clutching at her as he comes, letting his head drop down onto her shoulder. She holds him close, her hand sweeping a path up the nape of his neck and into his hair as he breathes against her skin. His grip loosens then and he slips free and settles onto the bed next to her.

They aren’t touching, not quite. All either of them would have to do is shift ever so slightly and they’d press together again--she can tell by the heat radiating off him. She thinks of leaving, thinks of slinking back to her room and shutting herself in and wondering what in the hell’s transpired tonight. But she feels the light touch of his fingers upon her hip, and his breath in her hair as he whispers: “Stay with me...” She relaxes, a smile ghosting over her lips, because that sounds just like him--giving her not a request but a demand. She slides backwards into his grasp, and he drops one arm very lightly over her, touching, but not possessive, not imprisoning.

She almost thinks that this will be okay until he speaks again. “Stephanie?”

She freezes. Not a demand, afterall. Merely a hesitation, a pause as he decided which name to use. And she’d have been fine with Brown or Fatwing or woman or harlot or anything other than her name because that--that means far more than his tone or his words can ever tell her. Yet still, she slides back into his arms, careful of his injuries, closes her eyes, and listens to his breathing until it evens out. Until she can know that he’s asleep, and that he won’t wake.

Because when he does--she’s gone.


	2. insatiable

**in-sa-tia-ble  
adjective: (of an appetite or desire) impossible to satisfy: “an insatiable hunger”**

* * *

It has been three weeks since Brown vacated the Manor. They haven’t seen her once on patrol, and Grayson has stopped asking about what happened. He suspects something, of course. It would be difficult not to, the way things had been going. The way his mood turns foul whenever her name is mentioned. He tells himself that he does not care. He tells himself it meant nothing, what they did that night she left--no, fled. Fled, like a coward, a villain. If he tells himself this, if he blames her and makes himself angry, it is easier. Easier to hate her, easier to pretend.

And on nights like these, when patrol is slow and he’s alone in his thoughts, drawing back to that night, to the sweat and the heat and their skin pressed together--it is most important that he pretend. Lest it distract him during a fight, or someone use it against him. He knows Grayson is displeased with the way he is handling this--whatever this is--as he hears him discuss it with Pennyworth frequently, but he does not care.

He finds it hard to care about anything, now. Other than doing his job wearing red, green and yellow. Cleaning up Gotham’s streets and fighting for whatever cause it is Grayson believes in--the one she believes so strongly in, as well. As if beckoned by the unwanted thoughts that still seem to gravitate around her, despite his best efforts, he spots a flash of purple and black towards the south side of the building.

He debates radioing Grayson, who is stationed at the north corner of the run-down Crime Alley. Afterall, the reason they haven’t seen her in three weeks is because she left. She’d made it abundantly clear she wanted nothing to do with them--with him. What good would it do to inform Grayson of her presence?

“Batman,” he begins, breaching the silence on their comm link. He wonders, briefly, if she still has access to it, or if she left it behind, along with everything but a handful of clothes and her uniform. When Grayson’s voice crackles to life on the other end, he snaps out of his thoughts, grumbling, “Knightwing spotted. Proposed course of action?”

“Knew she couldn’t stay under the radar forever. Not without our help, anyway. The girl loves her job too much.” He can practically hear the smirk behind the words. It unnerves him, how cheery and nonchalant Grayson remains about the news.

“So, proposed course of action?” He tries again, voice tight. A rumbling laugh echoes in the night around him.

“You’re acting like she’s a criminal or target, Robin. You don’t need my permission to go talk to her.” Damn him. He says this as if it is something simple and easy to accomplish. Which it isn’t, of course. Because it’s her and she’s insufferable and he doesn’t want to speak with her. She left them--him--and that should be the end of it. But he damn well knows it isn’t. It never is, with her.

He grumbles some choice words under his breath, and the laugh he receives through the comm link tells him Grayson has heard. Damn him twice, then. “Fine,” he hisses, finally relenting.

And he closes the comm link before he can say anything about it.

He makes haste across the three rooftops separating his perch and where he’d seen her pass by. It’s of barely any surprise to him when he finds her still standing there, peering into the gaping expanse of a demolished building, frown etched onto her face. He wonders what has brought her here, but remembers that isn’t his reason for being here and shakes his head, dropping down.

Once upon a time, he’d have startled her, but she’s older, more practiced, and has been living--and training--with them for nearly four years. She doesn’t even flinch when he drops beside her, escrima stick trained at his throat. His eyes narrow ever so slightly, while hers widen, focusing slowly. Clearly, she had heard someone approach, but had not guessed it would be him. She drops the weapon away from him, and something of a grin slides into place on her lips. “Looking to scare me, Little D?”

He would normally gripe about names in the field, because she’s forever incapable of respecting such a simple rule, but the way she says it and half-smiles, nonchalant, makes it seem for a moment like nothing’s changed. Like he’s a young Robin again, crossing Batgirl on a routine patrol, like she hasn’t been almost-missing for three weeks, like things hadn’t shattered when they’d--well, like nothing’s changed.

It’s when she starts blinking at him like he’s grown another bloody head that he realizes he still hasn’t spoken. “What are you doing here?” he practically growls, and the corners of her mouth drop slightly.

“Patrol,” she states, motioning to the ghost of a street around them. “Duh.”

“Batman and I have had this area covered all night. There is no need.”

She huffs and rolls her eyes, crossing her arms tightly. “Right. Of course; the Dynamic Duo don’t ever need help. My mistake.”

“Yes, it is,” he says. He wants to be angry again--he’s wanted to be angry at her so badly, but standing here, he notices the hints of a bruise on her cheek that sneaks up and under her mask, and the dark red streak along her jawline and he’s unable to feel anything other than strange, crippling worry. He wants to ask how it happened, wants to know who dared lay a hand on her, wants to find them and deliver them a fate far worse.

But he doesn’t. He can’t, as it isn’t his place. It hasn’t been since she left. Since she made it clear he had no place in her life, not anymore. She notices him staring, then, and looks away, just for a moment, and her eyes shift towards the building behind them. It’s subtle, and so very brief before her gaze finds his again, but he’s noticed. It’s hard not to, when he’s been watching her every move for some sort of answer as to why she’s here, now. Why she’s surfaced after three weeks, why it’s taken that long, and why--why she left. As her attention flickers back to him, her shoulders straighten and she twists her hands together behind her back, grinning effortlessly.

She says something then, maybe, but he doesn’t hear it, because something has caught his attention. Something that glints in the glow of the dying streetlight behind him. Something hidden in the depths of the broken shell of the building. Something that looks remarkably like an old neon sign--one whose words could read CLINIC if one took the time to put back the shattered pieces.

And suddenly he’s fourteen again, at home nursing injuries with Grayson that he’d been careless enough to receive on a routine patrol. And it was pouring outside when Pennyworth arrived with a girl he did not recognize. Because though it looked like Brown, there were far too many tears in her eyes and on her cheeks and her voice lacked all of its regular cheer. He did not understand what was happening then as Pennyworth draped a blanket over her shoulders and Grayson stepped forward hesitantly to take her hand. She was shaking, Damian had noticed, and there was dirt and blood caked on her clothes and skin. Grayson asked her something, but it was too low for him to hear, and the blonde shook her head weakly, her lip trembling.

“I’m so sorry,” Grayson said, and a sob somewhere between hysterical and strangled forced its way from her throat as she fell against him and the tears spilled forth again. Damian turned to Pennyworth, whose expression was rather vacant, and asked very simply what had happened. He would never ever be okay with the answer he received.

Her father had been nearly delusional when she’d brought him in. She’d done it because he’d been bleeding out and she’d sworn that he’d live to see the rest of his prison sentence through, no matter what. The one he’d escaped from almost three years before by poisoning his own daughter with Black Mercy. She’d never realized it was exactly what he’d wanted--that it was the one night a week her mother helped out at Dr. Thompson’s clinic. The one time they could all be together as a family before the bomb he’d had implanted in his chest went off and kept them together forever.

He hadn’t counted on the clinic being so busy, of course. So loud and bustling that Brown had been unable to hear Gordon on the line as she radioed in her father’s capture to the GCPD. He hadn’t counted on her stubbornness and her aversion to being anywhere within five feet of him to drive her outside to complete the call. He hadn’t counted on her surviving.

But as was her modus operandi, Brown defied those odds. She persevered and kept on until she reached the manor, where she stayed. Where she found a home with Pennyworth and Grayson and him, even if none of them had been there that night. Because she’d wanted to handle her father on her own. Had wanted to prove to herself and everyone else that she could do it. And as usual, though Damian strongly refused, Grayson had obliged. In the end, it hadn’t mattered--her frustrating desire to prove her self-worth. In the end, she’d failed, just as they had failed her by not being there to stop it. To stop her from becoming just like the rest of them--broken, bruised and parentless.

She’d changed after that. Hidden away her emotions from the world. Stopped wearing her bloody heart on her sleeve. Started acting more like a woman her age than some silly teenager. A woman who maintained very few relationships, and who he’d made the unfortunate mistake of...accepting. She’d allowed only short glimpses inside, at the old her. She’d kept much of herself guarded. But not with him. Not since things had started changing between them, too.

At least, that had been the case before that night. Now, he hasn’t a clue where things stand between them. Where that carefully pieced-together bond is shattered and damaged. Where he’d woken up alone in a cold bed and is trying very hard to hate her for it.

“Let me make it easier for you,” her voice stings as it pierces his thoughts. He blinks and looks up at her--wait, up? He’s quite sure he’s the taller of the two, last he checked--and her face contorts into a look of contempt; of disgust. “I left because that night meant nothing. It was a waste of my time, and so are you, Damian.”

He frowns. His name sounds strange on her lips. Not quite filled with the sudden venom the rest of her words are. “You’re just a kid. A little boy.” His forehead creases more, because he can swear she’s taller than she was a moment ago. Or perhaps...he’s smaller? And her eyes are so bright and so infuriated he has difficulty looking at them. He doesn’t know what’s going on, and he certainly doesn’t like it.

“Wanted by no one,” she continues, stepping closer, lips curling. “Not your parents, not your friends--not even the woman you’re in love with.”

His fists clench, and he feels his blood pressure spike as her hands push against his shoulders and he stumbles back unpleasantly. Who the hell does she think she is? To speak down to him, to talk to him this way, to assume she knows anything--means anything of importance to him. To tell him how he feels and how others see him. She has no business and no right, and she is ridiculously mistaken.

He isn’t sure where the sudden change in attitude has come from, nor why the crumbling wall of the clinic behind her seems to be leaning to one side the more he tries to focus on anything other than the look she is giving him, but he’s determined to have none of it. He opens his mouth to tell her just that, when she says his name again, louder and clearer, and just for a moment, he sees her expression as worried--as fearful. He focuses on her eyes then. Bright and wide in fear, glistening with tears. But why? Why is there suddenly a different Brown before him? When in the hell did the infernal woman become bipolar?

Because this Brown, the one that clutches at his arm and calls his name and leans far too close--close enough he can smell that faint perfume she likes to use, the lavender one--lacks the anger that is rarely seen in her, and the words that prey upon all the thoughts he entertains only in the darkest corners of his mind. All the fears he would never allow himself to admit he--fears. That’s it! That’s the cause of this ridiculously skewed reality he’s found himself in. And only one person he knows can control fears this easily.

“Scarecrow,” he hisses, and watches relief wash over her face, moments before the world spins and flickers and his mother stands above him, cold and uncaring.

“You were such a disappointment, habibi. A failure. You were meant for such wonders, such glory. But instead, you chose weakness. Family, friends, love for that wretched simpleton of a girl. It’s no wonder you chose her; you’re just as broken, as pathetic. And she doesn’t even want you.” His mother is swiftly replaced by a third figure, looming in the dim light of the alley. Even still, he can see an uncharacteristic smirk painted across Drake’s lips.

Just the sight of him nearly shatters what little control over himself Damian has. He’s been trained to withstand Crane’s fear gas and mental torture. And yet here he finds himself, stumbling backwards through an alley from whom he knows must be Brown, but who he sees only as Drake. Who sounds like Drake. “It’s not you they want, it never has been--it’s me. I was Batman’s best Robin, and you were there only by blood. I was Dick’s favorite brother, and you were just the crazy kid he thought he could help. The one that reminded him of Jason, who came before you, too. The Al Ghul's? They tried to make me their successor. And Stephanie,” he laughs then, shaking his head and crossing his arms. “Stephanie doesn’t want some little broken boy like you. She wants someone who can provide for her, keep her safe, protect her, and we both know that’s not you. I mean, where do you think she went after you screwed things up? Well, after she screwed you, anyway.”

“You’re lying,” he snarls, even though he knows he shouldn’t be reacting. Shouldn’t be giving in, but fighting it off. “You’re lying, Drake.”

“And you sound like you’re just trying to convince yourself there, kid. Deep down, you know I’m right. I’ll always be first choice, for everyone in this family. Everyone you care about will always want me, and not you. I’m the better Robin, the better brother, the better Wayne, the better lay--”

“Enough!” he yells, teeth bared as he lunges at Drake. His fist connects with something solid, but he cannot tell what it is he hits because suddenly, the world is spinning again and dimming and his head hurts so very very much. He hears his name once or twice, and then they hit the ground, hard. It's enough to jarr his vision back to normal, where Brown's lip is bleeding and she's scowling at him, "Dammit, Damian!" just as, a moment later, Drake is pushing him off, calling him week, taunting him.

"It's as if you think your opinion is of any importance, Drake," he scoffs, despite the fact that he's just itching to take another swing. He needs to stop letting him in, stop acknowledging the presence of the hallucinations. He is better than this, better than petty insecurities and uneeded emotions. He screws his eyes shut, and wills himself to focus on something concrete, something real--anything.

"Come on, Little D! I know you're in there!"

In the end, that's what does it. The nickname. The infernal endearing one only she uses with him. It snaps him to attention, and though the corners of his vision are muddled and blurry, he sees what's real again. He sees Brown with a split lip which he surely caused, the gash on her jawline reopened, and that lunatic Crane stumbling into view at the end of the alley.

"Dick," he mutters, and her brows perk in a way that reminds him of Ace, that bloody dog his father left for him.

"Excuse me?"

"Grayson," he mumbles, looking away before he does something stupid, like wipe the blood from her lip. "Grayson is nearby. We should--"

"What happened to you, Mr. No Names In The Field?"

Damn her to hell and back. The one time he was unable to think clearly and she had to speak up. "Nevermind," he grunted. "I'll radio Batman myself."

"Ooooookay then." She stepped back, shaking her head before looking over her shoulder. "Might wanna do it soon, Scarecrow’s a-hobbling this way.”

His gaze drags back towards the end of the alley, where he’d seen Crane before. Only now does he notice the pressure he is failing to exert with his right leg, how it makes him slow, off balance, in a way Damian recognizes. “Did you...did you fracture his kneecap?” He tries in vain to keep the awe from his voice. She never ceases to surprise him, even after all this time.

“Well, it was either that, or let him stab you, crazypants.”

He resists the urge to growl at her, lest she compare him to a feline, or something equally moronic. He settles for grunting and turning out of the alley. “I don’t understand how he administered the fear gas.”

“He walked right up and popped you one, that’s how. You weren’t exactly having a moment on our planet, D.” She checks over her shoulder when they reach the next block. “What were you doing anyway, off in lala-land during patrol?”

“I was thinking,” he states, pulling up his comm-link. He does not particularly wish to discuss it with her, given that it is about her. And one of the events in her life she does not like to think about. “Batman, this is Robin. Scarecrow spotted at the corner of Moor and Church Street, suggested course of action?”

It takes a moment for Grayson to respond, and when he does, he sounds mildly out of breath. “The usual, kid. If he’s done something worth it, call it in. If not...you have my permission to speak with--oh wait...that was Steph. My bad...”

He huffs as she leans closer, looking amused. “Does picking on poor Little D count?”

“Knightwing...nice to hear from you.”

“You sound a little out of breath there, Bats. Rooftop swinging taking too much out of you in your old age?” She’s wearing a grin he would find extremely irritating were it directed at him and not Grayson. In fact, it’s still irritating. Unreasonably so. He’d prefer it if she stopped, really.

“Ha ha,” Grayson chuckles, before grunting. “And no. I’m taking care of a couple...thugs over by the warehouse district. So you’re...on your own. Play nice.”

They exchange looks before the comm. cuts out. Her eyes crinkle in the low light as she considers him a moment, and it is then he notices her domino mask is missing. “Are you mad, woman? You’re not wearing--”

“Yeah, it was kinda knocked off my face by someone’s fist,” she says, stepping closer, her tone amused but her eyes saying something else. He sees the twitch of her hand, like she wants to reach out to him, but then reconsiders, chickens out, changes her mind. It aggravates him. “What did hallucinatimmy say to you, anyway? To set you off?”

“Nothing but lies.”

“Well, clearly it’s something you believe. Because that punch sure felt real.”

His reply is caught somewhere between it’s none of your concern and a piss off when he hears cackling nearby, which she seems too focused on him to notice. “Scarecrow is approaching. He needs to be dealt with.” Conversation deflection. She taught him that.

“And you fancy going another round with your fears, do you? We haven’t got gas masks, D.”

“I noticed,” he snaps, looking down at his feet as he clenches his fists. This was a mistake, coming to find her. He should have let her be when he saw her across the rooftops, and not followed her. Hell, he should have walked away from her that night after he almost died for her. But instead, he’d been stupid. And impulsive. He had actually bothered to care. And look where that had gotten him. “I was caught off guard. It will not happen again.”

“And we’ve levelled up from crazypants to grumpypants. Look, if we’re gonna find out what Scarecrow wants, and bag him and tag him, we need to--”

“We will do nothing,” he snarls. He is through listening to her. Allowing her to act as though nothing happened, as though there is not a very unpleasant burn in his chest at her proximity. “I will go back and apprehend the mad doctor and you...you will find some place to treat your wounds. You look awful. There is no we.” He turns away from her then and mutters, “Not anymore.”

“Damian, look, I--”

He stalks off without waiting to hear the end of the excuse already building on her lips. He does not wish to hear any more of them, or any more lies. He has lived far too many of them in his eighteen years, and does not need more. Especially not from her. Not anymore.

He backtracks almost all the way to the clinic, looking for signs of Crane, when her screams reach his ears. They rip through the night air as a knife would through butter, and it chills him to the bone. “Fuck,” he curses, and pivots on his heel. He travels as fast as his feet will carry him, winding and turning through the alleys. He nearly stumbles head over heels once, and knows the fear gas has not completely left his system when the edges of his vision begin to flicker and blur. He doesn’t once think that maybe the scream is another hallucination, something preying upon the darkest of his fears. The nightmares where he leaves her alone and everything he cannot protect her from takes her away. Because what if it isn’t and this is real and something has happened that he can’t--

There is no sign of Brown in the alley where they’d stood arguing, nor of Scarecrow, and he isn’t sure what makes the hair on the back of his neck prickle more. And with the lack of her mask, there is no telling... “Knightwing?” Only the echo of his own voice greets him in return. “Knightwing!” He tries again, louder this time. Still nothing. He wonders if he should radio Grayson. But what would he say? That he left her alone after telling her off and that he heard a woman’s scream--a scream that here, in this part of the city, could mean anything and belong to anyone?

No, no he’s sure it is Brown’s. He knows it is.

Because a moment later when it rings out from closer, maybe only a short block away, something inside of him snaps. He sprints faster than he has in his whole life, and comes skidding into a dark alley in behind an old pizza joint soon after, where he finds her. She lies in the middle, beneath the only lamp in the place, just outside the boarded up pizzeria door, a mess of blonde curls obscuring her face from his view. “Knightwing?” He calls once, squinting at her. His breath hitches in his throat when he is unable to tell from this distance whether or not she is breathing. But everything about this looks and smells like a trap to him, and there’s no telling what he’s walking into if he takes to her side now. “Knightwing?” Fourth time isn’t anywhere near a charm as still, she remains motionless and possibly not even breathing.

As he takes a step closer, he realizes why she isn’t answering. Stretching out from somewhere beneath her frame, out past the tips of her curls and the arm her head has fallen upon is a pool of blood. It tints her hair and stains her face and causes his heart rate to spike to an uncomfortable height. “No. No no no no no. Bro--” the rest of the word dies in his throat and he’s in motion again, coming to kneel at her side and trying to find a place for his hands that won’t hurt, won’t touch blood, and oh god, there’s so much of it. So much blood, her blood, she’s bleeding and he hasn’t any idea how to handle this.

He shakes her shoulders slightly, tries to call her name but it comes out strangled, and though he looks around for something to punch, something to make suffer for the state she’s in, he tells himself he can’t lose focus. He needs to access the damage and get her out of here before Scarecrow or some other lunatic comes back and finishes--god he can’t even think it. He won’t--can’t--let himself.

He needs to radio Grayson, immediately. He will know what to do. The man has far more experience in the medical field than he, and he wouldn’t want to make the situation worse by moving her. But he needs to do something because god, there’s so much blood and how does he stop it and what does he do and--

\--And a strained cackle somewhere to his right catches his attention.

Crane sits against a dumpster not five feet away. His leg is propped on an old stack of moldy pizza boxes, and his left arm hangs loosely at his side. Blood drips from the tips of his fingers into a small pool at his side, but it is nothing compared to the worrying one gathered beneath Brown’s head. Damian closes the gap between them in an instant, fists grabbing hold of the man’s collar, glaring down into eyes that are nearly grey, and so very empty. “What is the meaning of this? Why did you attack us?!”

Crane grins, and Damian notices his yellowing teeth. “I was looking for a little fun. To go out with a bang. But I think...I killed your girlfriend, little boy. Oops!” His nostrils flare and one hand reels back, fingers itching to knock the man’s teeth in. Wanting to inflict injury so severe, to make him feel the pain the girl lying behind him surely does, wanting blood. He gets his wish, just not by his own hand. Instead, as the man lets loose another frightening laugh that causes his entire body to shake, liquid bubbles forth from his lips--blood. There is a putrid smell in the air, and finally, Damian understands.

This is not the first time they have crossed paths and Crane has been without his signature Scarecrow mask. In recent years, it has been more of a rarity to find the man and the monster not entirely intertwined, as they are now. How often has Crane inhaled his own foul drug? How many times has he tortured and analyzed his “patients” in Gotham and gotten a dose of his own medicine? That much constant exposure to the fear gas could do more than drive a man over the brink of insanity. It could make him sick, it could...

“You’re dying.” Damian wrinkles his nose at the observation, stepping away from him. He’s sure it can’t be contagious, but he’s been gassed once tonight, and isn’t looking to be again. “You aren’t worth the effort.” He spits once at the man’s feet and then turns back to Brown, bringing up his comm-link, his heartbeat pounding in his ears. “Batman, this is Robin. Knightwing’s been hit. Requesting immediate pick-up.”

“I’m a little...tied up, kid. Can you--”

“No, we can’t,” he cuts him off without a thought, voice trembling slightly. “She needs medical attention. Severe--there’s so much--” he swallows thickly, “there’s a lot of blood.”

“Batmobile’s three blocks away...Are you sure--”

“Grayson, she’s dying, dammit!”

“...I’m on my way.” He kneels down beside her, and brushes hair from her face, trying to pretend he isn’t seeing red. Please hurry, he thinks.

Though he despises silences like these, he thinks he’d prefer them when Crane opens his mouth to speak again, his voice sounding strained. “Do you want to know what Blondie saw before I caught her? Do you want to know the fears that haunt her dreams at night, the darkest secrets she keeps buried deep inside?” He cackles, but it cuts off half way as he leans over, spitting blood onto the asphalt. “I assure you, they’re just as telling as yours.”

“I want you to hurry up and die, your broken fool, that’s what I want.”

“She was far too preoccupied caring about your little exit, she never saw it coming. Begged and pleaded for it to stop.”

“Your lies mean nothing, Crane,” Damian spits. If only his tone could reflect the message, he’d be set. But as seems customary tonight, his emotions are determined to give him away at every turn. The man can only laugh in return, and plow on.

“She ran away from her stickiest problems, you know, that’s how we found ourselves here. She ran away like a little child. Like you.”

“Enough.”

“Her dead parents, her lost friends, the Boy Wonder.” He gasps like he’s let loose a most awful secret, before laughing. “Oh, not you of course. The other one. The better one.”

“I said enough!” he yells, before his fist connects with Crane’s face and he feels a satisfying crunch beneath his knuckles. Finally, a silence settles into the alley.

Well, at least until Grayson speaks.

“Robin.” Oh hell, he loathes that tone. That is a very bad, very angry tone for Grayson. “Robin what--what happened here?” Damian looks over to see his gaze trained on Scarecrow, who is slumped over against the dumpster.

“He’s unconscious...I think.”

“You think?”

“I don’t care,” he clarifies, bending down beside Brown, making sure Grayson’s delay hasn’t made her, well... He spots the Batmobile at the end of the alley, and carefully cradling her head against his shoulder, he picks her up. “Are we going?”

“What happened here, Robin?”

“We’ll have to notify Pennyworth immediately so he will be ready when we--”

“What happened?” Grayson asks again, more forcefully, his hand catching hold of Damian’s arm as he pases.

“Now isn’t the time, Gra--” He shoots him a warning look, and as Damian pulls his arm away, he grunts. “Batman.” Grayson stares at him a moment, jaw tight and lips drawn into a thin line, before he nods once, so briefly Damian might’ve missed it were he not looking for it. He takes off for the car, careful of Brown’s fragile body in his arms, and slides into the cleverly disguised backseat they long since installed when she joined their Dynamic Duo--as Damian insisted that atrocity she called the Compact was unfit for a full grown woman and hero of Gotham to be rolling around in.

He does not speak a word the whole ride home. At least, not to Grayson. In the cover of dark, and the silence the Batmobile’s engine assures him he’ll have in the backseat, he holds her close; close enough to hear her weakened heartbeat, to know she is still there and still alive. And he finds himself whispering to her words that she will never understand, and things he will never allow himself to admit aloud in a language she knows. The words he keeps buried alongside the fears only Crane’s strongest fear gas can rip from him. About him and her and everything in between.

“Samah ni,” he repeats, over and over, cradling her head against his chest. He should not have walked away from her in that alley. He should not have left her, despite the fact she’d done the very same thing to him. He is supposed to be good at handling his emotions, at removing himself from the equation. But there are fears and insecurities he carries that he cannot always ignore, and tonight, they were on display for her to see. And it made him angry. Angry because he has few weaknesses, and there are few people who can hurt him the way she can, and those combined together could drag him down entirely, could end him.

He was afraid, and he was a fool. And she is lying in his arms dying because of it. He presses her against his shoulder, nearly cheek-to-cheek as he inhales the fading scent of pomegranate shampoo in her hair. “N’habek.”

He does not miss the way Grayson’s gaze flickers to him in the rearview, eyes wide. Say nothing, he glares back and thankfully, the man listens. They ride in silence until they arrive at the cave, and everything from there is a blur to him. As he steps out, Pennyworth takes her from him and lies her on a stretcher, taking immediate action against the wound on her head with a damp cloth and sedatives. He mutters that she should’ve been brought to him sooner and Damian shoots Grayson a look. Then, with needle and thread in hand, Pennyworth pulls curtains closed around himself and Brown, effectively locking him and Grayson out.

It takes the latter only a moment to break the silence.

“Start talking.”

“We--I had it handled.”

“Really?” Grayson’s voice is dripping with sarcasm. “Mind explaining how, please, because that--” he points behind him to the curtained-off area, “doesn’t look like handling it.”

“I was...distracted. He caught me off guard with fear gas. She led us to safety while I fought it off, but he must have followed. A difficult feat with a fractured patella.”

“Who broke his knee?”

“She did. Said she would rather that than see me stabbed. Surprising, given that until tonight I was quite sure she didn't care.”

“Damian...,” his expression softens and the boy's hands ball into fists. He will have no...pity from Grayson. Not now.

“I am not finished.” When he is given a nod, he continues. “I was...angry after my experience with the fear gas, unstable. I lashed out, bitter about not just tonight but that night too.” He has not spoken to Grayson about what happened between them, the details, but he knows enough to understand. To spot the anger bubbling beneath the surface as he simply mentions it. Damian looks away, because the anger is not simply directed at Crane and at Brown, but himself as well. “I was careless when I left her alone. I wasn't thinking. Everything set my teeth on edge...”

“He plays off fears and secrets, Damian, you know that. He's supposed to mess with your head. It's Scarecrow!”

“Yes, and it is Stephanie!”

There he goes, blindly using her name again. As he did the night she walked out on them all. Has he not learned? Has he not realized removing himself from the equation is the safest option he has?

“Scarecrow,” Grayson starts again after a moment. “Did you...did you kill him?”

“W-What?” He is appalled the question is being asked. “It has been years, Grayson. Years. I would not cross that line I have strived so hard to respect since I entered these halls. I would not--he is dying at his own hands--I would not break in my resolve for Crane! It's Scarecrow!”

“Yeah, and it's Steph!” He yells, throwing Damian's own words in his face. He steps closer, lowering his voice, as if on the other side of the curtain she is wide awake and listening to every word. Hah, how he wishes. “I heard what you said to her back there. It may have been in a language she can't understand, awake or not, but I do. You--”

“It meant nothing,” he grunts, crossing his arms. He is well aware he looks like a little child not getting their way, but he doesn't care. He doesn't want to talk about this. At all. Ever.

“Damian, I've watched you grow up. With me--with her. You've spent years looking after one another, together, and if you-”

“A measure of time means nothing when you sleep with someone who does not want you. Who walks out on you,” he snaps and finally, understanding dawns on Grayson's face, his mouth hanging open in an 'O' shape. “Those words meant nothing.”

“You can't just...turn off your feelings because she doesn't know what she--”

His words are entirely drowned out by fresh screams ripped free of Brown's lips. They wrench the curtains back to see her thrashing on the table, Pennyworth trying desperately to calm her, stitches along her jawline half-finished. He has evidently finished with her head wound and has moved on to her other injuries. As Grayson moves in to help, she writhes in place, nearly pulling the IV from her arm. “She is still under the influence the fear gas,” says Pennyworth.

“No no no, get away! I left! You should hate me! You should want nothing to do with me!” There are tears streaming down her cheeks as she hits Grayson repeatedly in the chest, and he calls her name a few times, but Damian knows there isn't any point. She will not hear him if she cannot focus, his words will only twist into those of whomever she is seeing. “Go away! Just go away!’

“Steph, it's me! It's Dick!”

“It's no use, Master Richard. The fear gas has preyed upon her unconscious mind. She is caught between a nightmare and the waking. She is also most likely in excruciating pain. She cannot hear you.”

“It's your fault,” she hisses, trying to pull away, to punch and kick. “It's all your fault she's gone! Not mine! I was only trying to help!”

“Well, we have to do something before she hurts herself! Or one of us!”

“Move!” Damian says finally, crowding in, pushing Grayson away and clamping his arms around her shaking shoulders. He turns her face him, avoiding a swinging fist or two, and tries to get her to look at him. “Brown, stop it this instant. Fight it! Fight it the way I did!” Still, she screams and mutters and cries, and he calls her name once more, forcing her gaze to meet his. Her eyes look far away and frightened and he can’t help wondering who it is she’s seeing instead of him.

“Brown,” he tries again, and thinks this is what she must have felt like, calling to him when he was hallucinating, unable to hear her. But she was able to calm him and snap him out of it, and he plans to return the favor. “Stephanie,” he says finally, and knows Grayson and Pennyworth have exchanged looks behind him, not only for the name, but the tone he uses. A tone far gentler and softer than the boy using it. “Stephanie, listen to me.”

His hands slide up to hold her head so she faces him. And though her cheeks are wet and her eyes glisten with tears, she has stopped screaming and thrashing about. He has no clue if she is hallucinating or if he’s snapped her out of it, but it is progress.

“Robin?”

He hesitates a moment, before nodding. “I’m here, you’re alright.” She whimpers pitifully, and her lip trembles, and he pulls her close. “You’re okay. No one’s going to hurt you. You’re safe.”

He repeats the words as her breathing slows and there is no longer a sob every other intake of air. He rubs small circles on her back, until she is calm enough that Pennyworth can administer morphine into her IV. Until she is nearly falling asleep in his arms. Until all he can smell is pomegranate shampoo and her and everything feels okay. Over her head of messy blond curls, he sees Grayson give him a knowing smile. Surely, when this is all over and she is healthy and safe and okay again, he will try to convince Damian that this means something, that he’s been right all along and there has been something between them. That she only fled that night because she’d been unsure of what she wanted.

“Tim...”

Or maybe, she just didn’t want him.

He freezes as she snuggles closer, but does not feel the warmth from her body where they touch. Instead, he feels only searing, stinging pain, through his stomach and up to his heart, like being punched repeatedly until needing to vomit. Which is exactly what he feels like doing--being sick. Because he’s an idiot and a fool and he’s been so goddamn deluded this whole time, thinking that she actually gave a crap. He’s been entertaining that false hope that Grayson is correct, that she meant what happened that night and everything before and that she is simply confused.

But now he realizes the only thing she was confused about was how to tell him he meant nothing. That he has always meant nothing. That he has, and always will be, precisely what fear!Drake said he would be--second place. For best Robin, for favorite son, and now, clearly, for Brown’s affections.

And he’s no longer sure why this surprises him anymore. He was born for disappointment, and he should begin to accept this fact, before he loses any more of himself in ridiculously useless feelings. He has the sense to lay her back on the lab-bed before stalking away and not once looking back. Not when Pennyworth and Grayson call for him. Not when he crosses the whole space of the cave, passing Batmobile, Compact and regular vehicle alike.

Only when the cold night air slaps him in the face and stings at his eyes does he slow his pace, running his hands through his hair, his heart pounding in his ears and his chest and everywhere else unpleasant. Wretched thing. What use is it if he can’t turn it off, shut part of it out, use it for living and breathing but not feeling. Because he doesn’t want to feel. Not right now, not like this. Because he’s through with it. Through with her and with Drake and with feeling this way. He is through feeling, period. It is a complete and utter waste of his time and focus.

He will simply stop caring. Grayson does not believe he can, but he will. He will, because he won’t be able to stand it if she sticks around after this, if she stays with them again. And god, he should’ve known. He should have realized it was foolish to pursue her, that the infernal woman would not return any affections he gave her. And he did know, in a way, if her fear gas counterpart is of any indication. He is still a child to her, a little boy she could not even entertain the idea of caring for that way. And what happened that night can be blamed on the alcohol, on some foolish fantasy, on her looking to...he doesn’t particularly want to think of why.

He is so furious that he allows the blue pilgrim to sneak up on him. In his defense, the strange young man travels through shadows and trickery and magic, but it is the second time that night Damian has been caught off guard and it makes him very displeased. His tone so reflects this. “Klarion. What are you doing here?”

“Ah, the young Wayne. Still unpleasant as ever,” he grins toothily. At his feet, his hellcat meows, its tail curling around his ankle. He glances back towards the manor. “I came to see if she is...okay.”

He means Brown, of course. He knows she is here and he knows she is injured because, well, because he always knows. Where she is and what she is feeling. He knows this because they are connected, somehow. Damian doesn’t know how, nor does he care to understand, but because of an exchange of fluids--a kiss--one Valentine’s Day, he can feel her emotions and pulse as well as his own. It has something to do with Klarion’s physiology, being of Limbo Town and magic and everything he is, but Damian doesn’t know the details. He’s never asked. Nevertheless, his hands ball into fists thinking of how this blue-skinned fairy from another dimension shares a deeper emotional connection with Brown than he does. Had he not just decided he was through feeling things about her--jealousy included?

Finally, he remembers Klarion’s presence. “She was severely injured while on patrol, but she is healing now. Pennyworth and Grayson are watching her.”

“And you?”

“What of me?”

“I would expect you to...be there for her. After...”

“After what?” he snarls, stepping closer. “After she used me and left? What do you know about it, anyway?”

They have not seen the witchboy and his familiar in months.

“She has been staying with Teekl and I since the night of your coupling.”

He huffs, flabbergasted with how casually he mentions it. Then again, his customs are rather different. He does not view relations between humans the way they do. And Damian’s focused enough on this that it takes a moment for his words to sink in. Klarion, not Drake. She has been staying with Klarion and not Drake. This, he is okay with. Or at least, he would be, if he still cared. Which he will tell himself he does not until it is the truth.

“Boy?”

He looks up, realizing he has spaced out yet again. Thinking of her.

“How do you--all of you,” he thinks to clarify, as he’s been to Limbo Town once or twice and met more of the witchkind in the last few years, “have no attachments? How do you not...”

“Feel?” He does not laugh, not quite, but there is amusement in his voice. Teekl purrs loudly. “We do. Basic emotions and desires. Limbo Town’s magic keeps us honest and untainted, but the longer we stay in the human world, the stronger they get.”

“So it is something genetic to your...kind, then? No off switch?” Because easy way out will never be part of Damian Wayne’s vocabulary.

“It is indeed of witchkind nature, as we are not from this world and created to become beings of chaos, but it does not mean we don’t...wish to know what it is like. I, more than most, for the kindness Stephanie has shown me.”

Damian scoffs, crossing his arms. “That would make one of us.”

Klarion’s face twists into a look of mild concern, and of confusion then, but it is gone in a moment. “There is no off switch that you speak of, but there might be a way...”

Damian raises one eyebrow cautiously. He is intrigued, but wary. Despite Brown swearing up and down until she is blue in the face that she vouches for him in the last few years, he still does not entirely trust him. Moreso, because he doesn’t trust magic. Or sorcery. Or whatever Klarion calls it. So he tries his best to look unimpressed as he says, “Oh?”

“It could be costly,” Klarion says, a hint of a smile on his lips as he begins circling him. “No magic is without price--not even ours.” Teekl purrs loudly in agreement, but his red eyes are focused on Damian, looking greedy. Gleaming. When he receives no objections, he continues. “But it is possible. I could make you forget how you feel for her.”

“Would it be permanent?”

“I would not advise--” Damian gives him a warning look, and he hears the click of the witchboy’s tongue as he disapproves. “I could reverse it, were you to change your mind.”

“And if I didn’t?”

“It would be permanent, in theory.”

“In theory?”

“No magic is without price,” he repeats, but elaborates no more. The answer is vague, but it will have to do.

“Then do it, whatever it is. And make it quick, before I do something moronic, like change my mind.”

Klarion tuts derisively, but says nothing further. Teekl’s eyes begin to glow as his partner outstretches his hands, palms flat, towards Damian. “Lrig htis fo evol ruoy tegrof,” he chants, and a prickling sensation starts up at the back of his head. It spreads slowly at first, as Klarion continues, “Reh dna dnob ruoy tegrof. Nekrob saw tahw dnem nac htob uoy litnu.”

The glow from Teekl’s eyes overwhelms him then, blinding him of all sight and sound and touch. There is nothing but red for several long moments until finally, with a loud crack, things slowly fade back into focus. The colors are dull and it’s a little blurry, but in a few minutes, Damian can clearly see the road outside Wayne Manor, the trees, the gates and everything else on the empty path. Empty? Why is it--Why is he alone out here?

What is he doing out here?

He frowns, looking around, listening. He can hear nothing. No sirens from Gotham or cars on the streets or planes in the sky. No voices on the wind, or trees rustling or crickets chirping in the night. All he hears is silence, and it is so refreshing her nearly forgets how strange it is that he’s outside the manor on his own wearing a bloody uniform. What in the hell?

And then it all comes crashing back. The missing noises all assault his ears at once, sounding three hundred times the volume they are supposed to be and his chest is struck by this sudden, crushing ache and he has to lean on the wrought-iron fence to stay upright. One hand clutches futilely at the left side of his chest, and he takes a handful of long, ragged breaths, trying to determine the cause of his strange and rather unpleasant symptoms. He feels like someone is slowly but surely compacting his ribcage with a formidable stream-roller, and would very much like it to stop.

And it does. It is over faster than his distorted vision and loss of sound, and then, thankfully, he is alright again. So, though he is overly suspicious and will look into it later, he shakes it off and trudges back towards the Manor, running a hand through his hair. He feels exhausted. Drained. And he aches, everywhere. The way he does after a rough patrol or mission. The way he hasn’t since...well, for a very long time now, he thinks, though he can’t pinpoint when last it was.

He’s still thinking about it, turning thoughts that feel a little fuzzy around in his head, when he steps into the cave and is met by an exhausted-looking Grayson. Who seems relieved to see him as he walks up and claps him on the shoulder. “I was worried you’d wandered off too far after...,” he stalls, unwilling to say something, and Damian narrows his eyes at him. “You okay?”

“Should I not be?”

“Well, after everything that’s happened tonight, I just figured...just--just making sure stress isn’t getting to you, alright? Don’t take stuff like this too seriously.”

“Like what?” Damian frowns, now very concerned about Grayson’s mental state. What on earth is he going on about? What’s happened now?

“She’s going to be okay, you know. Alfred took good care of her. And I know she--I know things have been a little hard on you both tonight but...but she asked for you, when she was conscious for a few minutes. I thought you might want to know after--”

“I’m sorry, Grayson, but I’m stopping you there. You aren’t making any sense, and I’m thinking maybe Pennyworth should take care of you.” He crosses his arms and snorts cheekily. “What are you talking about?”

Grayson frowns, confused. He steps back, staring at Damian. “Stephanie, Damian. I’m talking about Stephanie. And the fact that she almost died tonight but you saved her and when she wakes up you two are going to have a lot of talk--”

“Who the hell is Stephanie?”


	3. infallible

**in-fal-li-ble  
adjective: 1. never failing; always effective**

* * *

It’s been three weeks since they’ve spoken. An impressive feat, considering she moved back into the manor to recover, on Doctor Alfred’s orders. She sometimes wonders if he’s faking this selective amnesia because he’s still furious with her. Only it’s far too immature for him, and he’d have to be damn good at it, from what Dick tells her. Because he remembers missions and baddies they’ve all fought together, and...she’s just missing from it.

The first week she doesn’t much remember. She was in and out of consciousness, recovering from the stellar head wound and resulting blood loss good ol’ Scarecrow had gifted her with. How kind. She’d wake up to a different face almost every time. Alfred and Dick on rotation, most commonly, but sometimes, rare times, she’d catch a glimpse of red hair and glasses, wrapped in police black and blue, and she could’ve sworn that once there’d even been someone with an uncanny resemblance to Dr. Mid-Nite on the outskirts of her blurry vision. The one that really stuck with her, though, had been on the last day before she’d been cleared and deemed no longer infirm--a face she hadn’t seen in a very long time.

“Cass?” she’d blinked blearily, and a smile had ghosted over the girl’s lips. “What’re you doing here?”

Last time Cassandra Cain, equal parts graceful and lethal, had been in Gotham, it had been over a year ago--and it had been to say goodbye. Not forever, of course, as Stephanie’d never allow it. But Black Bat was heading overseas to track down remnants of her mother’s league and wipe them out--a loose end she’d had kicking around since Bruce’s death. So seeing her back had overruled the excitement of being up and at ‘em again.

“Heard you almost died,” Cass shrugged, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Heard you did, too,” Steph shot back. It was one of the many rumors that had reached their world with her name in it, but she’d never believed them, not for a moment.

“Not like we haven’t before,” Cass replied, and that was all it took. They were smiling and hugging and punching each other in the shoulder. Well, Cass was.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“Scaring me.”

She’d bit her lip and apologized, but just barely. The mention of being scared--of fear--made her shudder. Brought her somewhere she didn’t want to be. Cass reached out and touched her arm gently. Even if Dick and Alfred hadn’t told her already, which undoubtedly they had, she knew Cass could sense it, read it off her, as she’d always done. “Who was it?”

“Mom was first. Then Dad,” she sighed, remembering the yelling, the blaming and the taunting. It had been versions of herself once, from early on, clad as Spoiler and Robin. Tim had been recurring, too. But she hadn’t fallen prey to fear gas in years--and things had changed. Things had been different...

“And?” her friend look expectant, with one brow raised. Steph laughed. She hated that no measure of training on her part would ever shield her from Cassandra Cain’s skills. She was an open book.

“The kid, too.”

“Damian?” She frowned. “Why?” Steph fidgeted awkwardly. She’d only told one person so far about that night, and he didn’t count, given that he was from another world and saw things rather differently than they did. “What did you do?”

“Why does it have to be me that did something?” the blonde asked, going for mock-offended, but Cass wasn’t fooled. She raised the other brow, and Steph groaned, burying her head in her hands and mumbling her answer rather meekly. Despite her impeccable hearing, the other girl leaned closer still, asking her to repeat herself. Grumbling, Steph obliged. “I slept with him.”

Her friend’s eyes widened at first, her lips parting to form an ‘O’ shape, but it was gone quickly, replaced by a confused look. “And?”

“And? What do you mean, and?”

“And was it not...satisfactory?”

She spluttered. She couldn’t help it. Cass looked perplexed, curious even, and she certainly hadn’t been expecting that reaction. “It--It--we were...that’s besides the point!” Her face burned, her cheeks scarlet as she flashed back to that night. How she’d thought it was foolish, reckless and maybe even a mistake--but that was not something she’d call it.

“So, what is it then?”

“It’s Damian, Cass. Little D; he’s just a kid.”

Her argument was met with a shrug. “You know none of us are kids for long in this world. Especially not him, Steph, so what it is you’re afraid of?”

She blinked as the words sunk in. None of them had ever really been kids for long, had they? The first three Robins had lost parents young, been thrust into the sidekick gig early, forsaking school, friends, and essentials to grow up on for a pair of neon tights and a nifty little R on their chest. They were barely pushing double digits, and had been forced to mature far too fast, while on the other end of the spectrum, she and Babs had taken matters into their own hands because of their fathers--for entirely different circumstances, of course. She’d lost most of her teenage years fighting wars she’d been told weren’t hers, carrying the life of a child she’d never know, and dying for causes she’d orchestrated. Cass had been different only in the fact that the life had been chosen for her before birth, but she’d grown up becoming a master assassin, not mastering Disney songs and schoolyard games.

And Damian?

Damian spent most of that time being grown in a goddamn tube by a mother who was supposed to love him, not turn him into a weapon. It had done more than deprive him of a carefree, fun childhood and mature him significantly more than your typical ten-year-old--it had damaged him. He had trust issues, anger and communication issues--hell, he had feeling issues. He was anti-social and unfeeling and she didn’t blame him for a second. In fact, she’d run that night not because of his problems, but hers.

“Steph?” Cass asked, and she zoned back in, suddenly remembering a question had accompanied the wise words.

“I’m afraid of hurting him, Cass. More than I and everyone else already has. You know my track record isn’t the most spectacular--you know I suck at keeping people around. He’s been hurt enough, and still, for some reason, he let me in and I--,” she had to clamp her mouth shut and swallow back tears of guilt and frustration she hadn’t cried since that night. “I’ll only fuck it up.”

“You may already have. Dick tells me he--he is ignoring you?”

“No,” she said miserably, through her hands. “He says he doesn’t have a clue who I am.”

Though she had no advice to offer on her friend’s sticky situation, Cass did agree to try and “assess”  Damian, see if he’d suppressed her with some technique or whether something had happened that night to his brain. Neither came up with an answer, and week two rolled around.

And Dick finally asked. She was helping him clean the study--still stuck on menial tasks, not yet cleared for patrol. “Why did you leave?”

“Hmm?” she glanced across the room at him, pretending she hadn’t heard.

“The night Damian fought Black Mask...why’d you leave?”

They hadn’t talked about it, her and him, but judging by the way he was looking at her--the way he had been since she’d woken up--he knew. She tilted her head, frowning at him, mildly surprised, as she hadn’t expected Damian to share. Not even if she’d stayed--he just wasn’t the sharing type. “He told you?”

“The night Crane attacked. But I want to hear it from you.”

She sighed, leaning back against a desk. “I’m sure it won’t matter.”

“Humor me.”

Playing with a strand of her hair, she did her best to explain. To his credit, he listened without question or interruption, but it did nothing to lift her unease when faced with his neutral expression. “The fact that Damian and I...”

C’mon now, Steph, you’re an adult. Use grown up words, she’d thought.

“The fact that we slept together isn’t why I ran. Well, it is, but not--not because it was stupid or a mistake. Er--it was pretty stupid but I--I didn’t want--,” she bit down on her lip, cursing her stupidity. Why was it that now, of all times, her brain chose to turn to mush?

“I was scared,” she said finally. “I was scared of what it meant--to me, to him. I wouldn’t take it back, the connection we shared that night but I--I thought maybe that was it, just a moment where we were weak and he’d almost died for me, and we’d move on and go back to normal. But thinking that was just as stupid as going there in the first place and I--,” she looked up at him then, pleadingly. “He called me Stephanie, Dick. Not Brown, or Fatgirl, or harlot...just Stephanie and he’s never--he doesn’t--,” She ran a hand through her hair, pushing herself onto the desk to sit comfortably. “I was scared of hurting him.”

Dick chuckled humorlessly. “Funny, since that’s exactly what you did.” He sighed, shaking his head. “He didn’t say anything about you for weeks. Wouldn’t touch anything you’d left behind, wouldn’t even say your name in conversation. Not until that night with Crane. Not until you were lying in his arms bleeding out, and he looked more scared than I’ve ever seen him--and it had nothing to do with fear gas. I thought--I thought he’d killed Crane, Steph. I thought you were dead and he’d killed him.”

She found her toes of particular interest then, face burning, chest aching. Dick stepped towards her, and his hand came a moment later on her shoulder, causing her to look up, hesitant. “I get it, Steph. I do. Probably more than anyone. It’s not like you’re the first Batgirl to have a Robin.”

She thought of Babs then. Of what she’d told her before of their history. “We're all broken, and maybe there’s no way of fixing us, of putting the pieces back together,” he went on. “But maybe we don’t need to, maybe all we need is someone who understands. And you? You understand him, Steph.”

And he was right. Because though the little brat got on her nerves and frequently made her want to pull her hair out or punch him, she got him. She had for years. “But none of that matters, not anymore, since he hated me so much he convinced himself I don’t exist.”

Dick sighed, nodding. “Half true, Steph. He was mad, but he didn’t hate you. I think he wanted to. I think he wanted to so badly he did something monumentally stupid to forget you--but he couldn’t ever hate you.”

“Why not? I’d hate me.”

“Even if you loved you?”

Her breath hitched in her throat and she stared at him, perplexed. “W-What did you...”

“He let you in, Steph. He doesn’t just let people he doesn’t care about in.”

“I know that, but you just said--”

“I didn’t saying anything that mattered. Not until we find out what he did to himself and fix it. Not until he can say it himself.”

She snorted. “Unlikely.”

“I’m sure if you figure things out before then, he might surprise you. He’s already said it once--you were just too busy dying.” He reached out to ruffle her hair when she remained too dumbstruck to answer. “Now, come on. Let’s hit the books and see if we can find what the idiot did.”

She figured out her shit pretty quickly--she’d know for a while that she cared for him, she’d just been too scared to admit it. But they didn’t get anything even remotely close to a lead until week three. When she was finally cleared for patrol, and allowed out for playtime in her newly patched-up suit with the Dynamic Duo. When they’re investigating one of the abandoned chemical plants on the outskirts of Gotham that isn’t so abandoned anymore.

“Knightwing,” her reinstated comm. link crackles to life with the rumble of Batman’s voice. “Trouble in the East Wing. Robin says he’s spotted Sebastian Blackspell. How close are you?”

She brings up her navigation system and spots the dots that symbolize her and Dick and Damian and makes a face. “Closer than you,” she replies, pushing her feet forward before she’s done speaking. “I’m on my way.”

“I’ll meet you there.” There is a pause, but he doesn’t cut off completely. “And Knightwing?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

She almost laughs. Almost. But then she remembers that the last two times she and Damian have fought together, one of them nearly died, so she stays quiet and presses on. “Here’s to hoping third try’s not a charm,” she mutters, running as fast as her feet will carry her.

She hears him before she sees him.

“Unhand me this instant, Blackspell!”

“Certainly, Robin. As soon as you tell me why--”

She doesn’t given him the time to finish, whipping a batarang ahead of her as she skids around the corner to the East Wing. It clips Blackspell in the forearm and he drops a rather grumpy Damian, who turns to her, look furious. “Are you insane, woman? You could’ve hit me!”

“Fat chance, I was aiming,” she grins.

“From around the corner!”

He may not remember her, but he certainly remembers how to argue with her. “Don’t worry, Pretty Boy Wonder, it wasn’t anywhere near your face. ‘Sides, I don’t miss.” He gives her a look then, and she recalls, briefly, that Dick has been showing him old archive footage at the cave to try and jarr his memory. Unsuccessfully and not without a fight, of course. “Much,” she adds sheepishly, before her throat constricts and her feet lift off the ground. Blackspell hovers towards them, hand outstretched towards her.

“Your interruption is unwelcome,” he hisses.

“Too bad, party crashing’s in my nature,” she chokes out, seconds before Damian leaps, teeth bared. Unfortunately, Blackspell merely has to flick his wrist and he’s strung up the same way as her. “Who invited you anyway?”

“This plant is mine; I am conducting research--”

“--experiment on the homeless--” Damian glares.

“You were uninvited,” he goes on, glancing from Steph to Damian. “But I have decided you will stay.”

She manages to snort as the pressure around her throat eases slightly. “Sorry, Blackspell, but I can personally assure you he doesn’t swing that way.” She doesn’t miss the questioning look Damian shoots her, while Blackspell looks perplexed.

“I have no interest in Robin, merely why he reeks of Chaos Magic.”

“Shame, you’re missing out. He’s a real great--whatzit?!” An eerie chill creeps up her spine and she shudders. “Did you just say...Chaos Magic?” No...he couldn’t have.

“Yes. As in that used by the residents of Limbo Town.”

“Yeah, thanks gramps, I’m familiar with it--and the little blue pilgrim I’m starting to think is responsible for all this.”

Blackspell suddenly hovers closer, eyes wide and frantic, lips pursed in a snarl. “Klarion. The Witchboy. You are acquainted with him?! Where is he!”

Oh, nifty, there’s that constricting pressure on her throat again. She sucks in air sharply, eyes darting behind him, looking for any signs of Dick. Hurry up, Bats. “I don’t--I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in weeks! Not since--”

And suddenly, it clicks. Makes sense. Makes her want to pull her own hair out--something she’s used to where Damian’s concerned. But this is different. Because she can’t believe she didn’t see it sooner. She’d stayed with him and Teekl after leaving the manor. She’d told him everything, and this was how he helped out? Went and made Damian, who didn’t even trust magic, forget her? And she’d so wondered why hadn’t shown up that night, or why he hadn’t been one of the faces she’d woken up to that first week.

Surely, being linked, he’d of felt her fear--felt as the life trickled out of her. He’d of known she’d almost died. She had thought it off he’d never come, but now she realizes he must’ve. Only he’d crossed Damian instead of her, and things had played out this way.

She snaps back to attention as Blackspell leans towards her, sneering. “You will take m to the witchboy so that I may harvest his abilities. Do this, and you and the boy shall leave here free.”

She scoffs. “What do you think I am, new?”

“None of you ever stand by your word,” Damian adds, but he’s not looking at Blackspell. Hell, he’s not even looking at her. And a smile almost finds its way onto her lips when she realizes who he is looking at. “You’ll just as soon harvest us.”

“And even if Gotham happens to have a Harvest Festival, I’m pretty sure it’s not big on harvesting people,” she keeps it up, knowing they need only a few more seconds to stall. “You know, I’m not really sure what it is Gotham actually harve--”

Blackspell shrieks as Dick glides into him. Or rather--as the taser in Dick’s hand does. He thrashes for a few moments before collapsing. And then the magic is broken, and she and Damian are free to drop back on solid ground. Or, in her case, launch herself at him with all the anger she can muster. “You went to Klarion? You went and made a deal with magic to get rid of me? I can’t believe you!”

His face contorts into a sour look and he brushes dust from his uniform as Dick pulls her away from him. “I haven’t any idea what you’re talking about, woman, but if it has anything to do with what that lunatic was babbling about, you’re just as--’

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, kids. Let’s play nice, shall we? We don’t want to wake said lunatic,” Dick sets himself between them, and his frown is just barely perceptible beneath his mask. “Knightwing? Start talking.”

“After I showed up and saved grumpy pants from the big bad of the day--”

“Which was wholly unnecessary, as I had it handled.” She rolls her eyes  at him while Dick grins.

“He started talking about Damian smelling like Chaos Magic. As in Klarion magic,” she emphasizes, and Dick groans as it clicks, wiping a hand down his face.

“You magically erased her from your memories? Really?”

Damian huffs and crosses his arms. “Not that I recall such a thing, but if I did, I’m sure I had great reason.” He gives her a pointed look, and she glares at him, taking a step forward. She opens her mouth to call him something foul when Dick slides up, shaking his head. Tells her he’s radioing the GCPD and they’re calling it a night, and she and Damian spend the ride home in silence, like a couple of bickering children.

She makes it all the way to her room before she cracks. “Klarion!” she calls, stripping her mask off and throwing it onto her bed. “Klarion, I’m damned sure you can hear me! Where are yo--”

She feels Teekl’s tail brush against her leg as he saunters past, purring. A second later, Klarion steps forward from the shadowed corner of her room, hands folded behind his back. He has enough time to manage a smirk before she’s on him. “Start talking, Klarion. What did you do to Damian?”

Teekl hisses at her foul attitude and back ups, while the witchboy simply smiles wistfully. “I wondered how long it would take you to discover my involvement.”

“What did you do, Klarion?”

“I did nothing the boy did not ask for,” he shrugs. “He was upset and you were...unwell.”

“So you--what--you make him forget who I am? That I exist? On the off chance that I die and then he won’t have to care?"

Klarion frowns, stepping closer. “But I only took away what ailed him--his feelings for you.”

“Well, you must’ve given your spell an extra little kick--because it took everything about me away.” She hates the way she sounds absolutely miserable. And she can tell he notices by the way his eyes widen and Teekl’s growl softens. Sighing, she drops to sit on her bed, head in her hands. It takes him a moment before he hesitantly sits beside her.

“I have done more bad than good in trying to help, haven’t I?”

“You can say that again.”

“I have done more--”

She looks up at him, laughing softly. “No, no, it’s a saying, Klarion. An agreement. I was agreeing with you.”

“Oh,” he blinks at her once or twice, perplexed, before hints of a solemn smile grace his lips. “At least that is something--I have made you laugh. An improvement over hurting you.”

“You know what’d be an even better improvement? If you could finite incantatem whatever spell you put on Damian and bring him back.”

“Will this not...hurt him? He will remember his feelings for you and--”

“And I’ll be able to make things right. I’ll be able to tell him...about my feelings.”

Klarions’ face scrunches up the way it normally does when he has difficulty understanding human customs, before he looks away. “I would help you, Stephanie, but I cannot.”

“W-What?” she stammers, not quite sure she heard right. Praying she didn’t. “What do you mean, you c-can’t?”

“I made a pact with the boy when I cast the spell. I cannot lift it. The consequences of breaking it would be...”

“But the spell went wrong anyway! It took more than it should’ve! Can’t that just...make your ‘pact’ null and void?” She makes little finger quotes in the air, trying to remain calm. “Finito? Non-existent?”

He shakes his head. “A pact is a pact, I am afraid.” She opens her mouth to protest, but he brings up a hand to stop her. “All magic has a price, a weakness. I cannot lift it, but you can. Surely a loophole exist somewhere.” He gets to feet and Teekl stretches, meowing loudly. They’re leaving.

“Wait,” she stands as well, grabbing his arm. “What does that mean? I can break it? How?” He looks down at her then, smiling wistfully.

“I wonder if you still taste like Christmas.”

And then he’s gone, and she’s standing alone in the middle of her room, wondering what the crap she’s supposed to do now. Because he’s told her before, on one eventful Valentine’s Day, that she tasted like Christmas, after she’d planted one on him. It had been the starting point of their strange connection by magic, and their even stranger friendship...

All because of a kiss! “That’s it!” she grins, clapping her hands together. “A kiss!” she tells Dick the next day, sitting in the study, discussing what she’d learned from Klarion.

“A kiss?” he frowns skeptically. “That’s going to fix him?”

“C’mon, Grayson, it’s the loophole that’s defeated all magic spells since Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The kiss that woke up Sleeping Beauty, that saved the Little Mermaid, that turned the frog back into the Prince.”

“And Klarion said this, did he? That a kiss would break his lousy spell?”

“Well,” she turns slightly red and fidgets under his gaze. “Not in so many words. But come on!” She throws her hands up, grinning. “How perfect is that? Damian, the Disney damsel in distress. He’ll have a cow!”

“Or he’ll have nothing, because it won’t work.” He crosses his arms against his chest and shrugs ever so slightly in his rolling chair, looking unconvinced. “Steph, you know just as well as I do that those kisses are, well, special.”

Are true love’s kiss, is what he isn’t saying, is what’s hanging in the silence between them. A silence that lingers a moment before she says, “So, you’re not going to help me tie the kid down and plant one on him?” Dick’s eyes widen and she quickly waves her hands in front of her, shaking her head. “Kidding, kidding! It was a joke!” Mostly...

“I’m going to help any way I can, Steph. You know I want him fixed as much as you do--the dynamic in the field and off it just isn’t the same without, but...I’m just not sure this is the right way to go about it.”

“It’s the only way we’ve got!”

“So we look for another! We know what caused the problem now--magic. I can get in touch a friend of mine--Zatanna--and she can look into it. If you wait just a little--”

“I can’t wait anymore, Dick! I spent three weeks getting up everyday and fighting with myself about coming back or not, knowing I’d hurt him, trying to figure out how to make it up to him, only to find out I didn’t exist to him. And I’ve spent almost a month more trying to find a way to fix it so he doesn’t hate me anymore!”

“I get it, Steph, I do. But this is Damian we’re talking about and--”

“And not Babs or someone you feel that way about. The kid still worships the ground you walk on, Dick, so what’s another for weeks, right? Well it doesn’t work like that for me, so please don’t tell me you know how it feels--she never forgot you.” And with that, she storms out of the study, knowing that if she stays a minute longer, she’ll do something stupid like burst into tears. She isn’t much of a crier, but she can feel frustration bubbling close to her breaking point, and she knows she needs to let off some steam before she says something she’ll regret.

If she hasn’t already. Bringing Babs up was stupid, careless, and it’s something she’ll have to apologize for later. But for now, she’s settling for a locked training room session, and a chance to beat the poor, defenseless punching bag with everything she’s got.

Maybe Dick’s right. Maybe they should wait--take the time to process what they’ve learned, find a foolproof way to fix it. But then--he’s the one who chose to forget about how he felt. Who was so angry and hurt, he wanted her gone.

So what if he doesn’t want to be fixed?

“Which one are you attempting to hurt more, you or the bag?”

She looks up to see him leaning in the doorway, one eyebrow raised, arms crossed and lips pulled in a smug smile. She huffs loudly, blowing hair from her face, and swings a roundhouse kick so hard into the punching bag the hinges in the ceiling creak and groan. “Or perhaps it’s me,” he says, amused as he steps into the room. She notices that he’s in shorts and his second favorite workout shirt--not that she keeps track, or anything--and a tenseness settles into her shoulders. She steps off the mat to collect her things, figuring she’ll give him the space when he’s suddenly in front of her, arms pulled tight across his chest.

“You’re in the way, Damian,” she says without looking up. She won’t admit she’s a little preoccupied with the muscles in his arms.

“I’m aware. I thought you might like a sparring partner that doesn’t stand there and let you have your way with them. One that actually fights back.”

Now she has no choice but to look up at him. She wonders sometimes if he even realizes how some things sound coming out of his mouth. She passes up the chance to tease him, because she just doesn’t feel up to it, and shakes her head. “No thanks. I’m not in the mood.”

“Well I am. And I’d also like some answers--” his lips purse briefly, as he considers his words, and then he tries again, “I’d like to talk.” She stares at him, unresponsive, and he coughs. “About our...partnership.”

“Would you?” She hums, crossing her arms and raising her eyebrows, curious. “Well, I’m not that easy, Little D.” Somewhere, a little voice that sounds remarkably like him almost calls her a liar. “What’s in it for me?”

“Fine,” he gripes. “For every hit I score, you will answer a question, and for every hit you score, I will...”

“Agree to watch a Disney movie with me,” she grins, and he opens his mouth, no doubt to object, but she shakes her head. “Fair’s fair, take it or leave it.”

“What moron would agree to such an atrocious thing?”

It stings. Not because he’s insulting Disney--god knows she’s used to that. But it’s a reminder that no amount of banter and arguing and familiar sparring erases the fact that he doesn’t remember. “You did, once,” she says softly, and his eyes widen. His jaw clenches as he evades her gaze, and neither says anything for a moment as he watches her. Finally, he sighs, conceding defeat.

“I’ll simply have to make sure you don’t touch me,” he argues, taking his place on the other side of the mat, and waving her forward. She smiles deviously, and dashes towards him. Only at the last second does she put on the brakes and drop to her knees, swinging out. She just barely catches his shin as he jumps away.

“Easier said than done, Simba,” she snickers. Lion King was the first Disney movie he sat down to watch with her, once upon a time, and she plans to make it so again--or maybe Lion King II, given the route their lives have since taken. She thinks that maybe this won’t be such a bad idea, because if he can’t remember her, he can’t remember how she fights. She’s got the upper hand.

Or so she thinks, because a moment later, she feels the sting of a punch on her arm. “And that earns me a question,” he states as she backs up. “What were you insinuating yesterday with Blackspell when you said you could assure him I did not--” and here, he cringes, like he can’t quite make himself comfortable with her phrasing, “swing that way?”

She knew he’d start with that. It makes her grin--if he’s going to play this game, he’s going to have to learn to phrase his questions better. Because she can walk right around this one. “That I knew your interests were of the female variety, as that’s what you’ve slept with recently.”

“But you said--”

“Ah-Ah-Ah,” she waggles a finger at him, tongue licking at her lips as she holds back a shit-eating grin. “That was one question, and one question only.” She slips out of his reach, fists up. “Gotta play by your own rules, D.”

So he does. The next opening he sees, when she’s changing her footing and trying to put more mat between them, he fakes right as she goes left, and he catches her in the back. As she stumbles, he asks, “you told him you could personally assure him of this. Why?”

She rushes him again. While she is sure this tactic would not work on any normal occasion, she feels confident that backed by her words “because I’m the one you slept with!” seconds before she reaches him, it’ll throw him so off-guard he won’t know what hit him. And work it does. She skids across the mat, kicking out as he falters, eyes wide, and he lands on his ass. She’s up and at ‘em a moment later, hands on her hips. “You alright there, Beast?” Although he’d never admit it, Beauty and the Beast was his favorite. She knows this because he always complained the least about watching it with her.

“Fine,” he barks, swinging his legs out and taking hers from right underneath her, flooring her. “What were you telling Blackspell he was missing out on; that I was great at?”

“Looking for a little ego boost, Boy Wonder?” she snickers, trying to wriggle away, but he clamps his legs around hers and swings himself up, looking to pin her down.

“I’m asking the questions here, not yo--,” the breath is knocked out of him as she uses momentum and the powerful grip their entwined bodies provide her with and flips him. It ends with her pinning him, but she finds she’s the one out of breath when she notices loose strands of her hair brush his cheeks--how they’re that close, how they haven’t been since that night.

“I was going to tell him you were a great kisser,” she manages, despite the fact that her heart’s in the pit of her stomach and is reverberating in her ears so loudly she can hardly think.

He reaches up, never once breaking their gaze, taps her lightly on the arm and says, “What were we to each other?” But she’s not listening anymore. She’s far too focused on how he’s staring up at her, without words, almost like the way he used to, and it’s all she can take. She leans down and presses her lips against his.

She isn’t sure what she’s expecting--be it birds breaking into song or rainbows and fairy dust pouring out of thin air or something more than the faint taste of vanilla and sweat--but it isn’t his calloused hands on her skin in a way she doesn’t like. It isn’t him pushing her up and off. It isn’t the look of confusion in his eyes or the anger in his voice. “What the hell are you doing, Knightwing?”

Not Brown, or harlot, and not even remotely Stephanie. Knightwing. The same thing--and only thing he’s called her since she woke up. “It didn’t work...,” she falls back, sitting on her heels as he wipes the back of his hand over his mouth and sits up.

“What didn’t work?” he barks. And crapsticks he sounds mad. His voice rises when she doesn’t answer. “What didn’t work, Knigtwing?” Still, nothing, and she faintly hears him slam his fist into the mat. “What was this to you--a joke?--an experiment?”

“What?” She looks up in horror as he stands, backing away, hurt and angry and everything at once. “No. No! I was just--I was trying to fix it--trying to break the spell that took your fee--memories away,” she catches herself, but it doesn’t much matter. He’s not listening.

“This is not one of your precious Disney movies, woman, this is reality--and it does not work like that.”

“I’m starting to see that,” she says softly--achingly.

“Disregard my personal space again, and I can assure you it will be the last time you do.”

He leaves her sitting there with the taste of failure on her lips and the burning ache of heartbreak in her chest. It is several moments before she pushes herself to her feet, wipes the sweat from her brow, and resumes her assault on the punching bag with renewed fervor.

As she does every night for the next week after patrol, because they’re back to not speaking. Dick hasn’t asked about it, but she’s sure he can assume. She’s apologized to him for the whole throwing-Babs-in-his-face deal, but they haven’t talked about Damian and fixing things again. She sees now that he was right, believing in fairy tale solutions was pretty much a pipe dream from the beginning, and she doesn’t enjoy I told you so’s.

It ends with her opting out of patrol one night, because they’re going into Black Mask’s turf, and even if he’s been in Blackgate since that night with Damian--even if it’s not the same man running the show anymore--it fills her with incredible unease to be within ten feet of the Steel Mill. She expects it to be a quiet night, sitting on the roof outside her window, watching the lights from Gotham. She expects to spend it alone with her thoughts and the hot cocoa Alfred eventually brings her when she’s been out there long enough for her toes to turn to ice.

Which is why she’s surprised when Damian takes a seat beside her only two hours after the Dynamic Duo had left, already changed out of his uniform. “Quiet night. Grayson is monitoring chatter from the cave instead of on a freezing rooftop,” he explains after a moment, though she did not ask. She wants to, though. Why he’s here willingly, why he’s speaking to her at all, what he wants. Because he always wants something. He’s never without purpose.

All she manages is a weak “cool,” and she notices him deflate a little. He’s actually trying to make conversation, is he? Iiiiiiiiinteresting. He fidgets slightly beside her and looks like he’s fighting himself over what to say.

“It was...regrettably impolite of me to threaten you the other night. It is not how teammates and...friends function, as Grayson remains determined to point out.” He doesn’t look at her the whole time he speaks, and a grin sneaks its way onto her lips.

“Are you apologizing, Damian?”

He huffs. “No. I am merely stating a fact.”

“Mhmmm.” When his gaze flickers over to her, he’s met with her winning smile, and he rolls his eyes, souring.

“Tt. Is nothing ever simple with you?”

“What can I say? I’m determined.”

“You and I have rather different words for irritating, Brown.”

Her whole demeanor changes, as her eyes widen and she perks up. She’s frozen for a moment, unsure if she heard right, wondering if he can hear the way her heart rate just spiked. It is the first time he has addressed her as such, and she sees the faint smirk on his face, making her breathing stutter slightly. “You called me...Brown. Does that mean...do you...”

Her heart plummets into her stomach when he shakes his head, hope deflating. “No, I have not remembered, but...Grayson told me I used to address you as such. And that I could start trying to do so again, as calling you Knightwing in public would be unwise.”

“Just a bit,” she smiles, but it lacks her usual cheer and he knows it. He fidgets again, clearing his throat.

“It feels...familiar. Perhaps that is something?”

“Yeah.” It means he’s trying. It means maybe he wants to remember, maybe he wants to know more than what others can tell him.

“You never did answer my final question that night we sparred,” he brings up, and she looks over at him hesitantly. She’s not really in the mood to walk on eggshells with him, but what could it hurt, when they’re already this broken? “About what we...were to each other?”

Because she wasn’t given the chance. Because she didn’t answer with words but something else. “Because I don’t know, Damian. I don’t know what we were.” She takes a sip of her now lukewarm cocoa before continuing. “Teammates. Friends at the best of times, annoying pains in each other’s asses at the worst.”

“Lovers?” he asks, sounding hesitant, wary. She doesn’t blame him. Poor kid’s probably afraid she’ll jump his bones at any moment or something. The thought makes her chuckle.

“Once, before everything got complicated. Before I ran away and you forgot me.” Silence settles between them then, and she considers leaving it at that, going back inside before the knot in her stomach gets any worse. But of course, he goes and ruins all that by opening his mouth again.

“I think I may have loved you once.” Her head snaps up as the words--something she hadn’t been expecting from him, and certainly not this him--hit her. It’s something she’d only guessed at--something Dick had told her, but not confirmed. Something that does nothing to ease the pain as he sits there, not looking at her, brow creased and confusion etched onto his face.

“I think you did,” she says finally, and the tremble in her voice gives her away. He looks up, eyes narrowed in anger, but not at her, judging by his next words.

“Then why did I make the witchboy take it away?”

“Because you didn’t want to, and you’re stubborn. Because we had no idea what we were doing,” she smiles sadly. “Because I was awful to you. I hurt you.”

“And I, in turn, hurt you.” She can only shrug as he stares at her.

“It’s not like it wasn’t justified, I really--” His hand covering her mouth kind of shuts her up, and she frowns at him. He presses his index finger against his lips, signalling her to keep quiet and she nods. She knows this isn’t something cheesy or stupid by how suddenly alert he is--and because Damian Wayne doesn’t do cheesy. When he pulls his hand away, he taps his fingers to his ear, peering into the dark around them. She strains to listen, but knows it’s pointless; he’s always had impeccable hearing, like Cass. Like others trained the way they were--like...

“The League!” she yelps as a figure rises from the darkness at the edge of the roof; as more appear all around them. They’re on their feet in an instant, and but it’s no use, they’re surrounded.

“Your methods are rusty, Damian. You should’ve heard us long before this,” a female voice says, and the first figure Stephanie noticed steps forward into the light. She’s bald, with a silver cross hanging from one ear, and hard green eyes. What the crap is she doing here?

“I remember you,” Steph frowns, because when they last met, the girl--Pru--had held a gun to her head, Steph had introduced her to her right hook, and their mutual friend Tim had been forced to separate them.

“And you would do well to forget you did,” Pru says, nose wrinkled. Steph blinks, not sure if its a warning or an insult, but it washes away when she steps forward and points a blade at Damian’s chest, just over his heart. The hair on the back of her neck rises.

“You are to come with me, Ibn al Xu’ffasch. Zwjat al ibn al Ghul demands your presence.” Steph almost groans. She has enough trouble keeping up when they stick to English. It just isn’t fair.

“You can tell her I have no interest in family reunions, as I have not in the years she has sent her puppets since father and grandfather’s passing.” While several of them bristle at being called puppets, bald girl seems unphased as she smiles. “Tell her she is better off with whatever she named this year’s copy of me.”

“You misheard me. This is not an invitation.”

Damian touches the tip of her sword against his chest and smirks. “I was hoping that was the case.” He slams his palm against the flat end of the sword, sending it flying as he dives, snarling, for bald girl. The others leap into action as she shrieks something about minimal harm coming to him, and Steph’s survival instincts kick in quite literally as she spins, taking one of the leather-clad losers down face-first.

The next few moments are very much a blur to her as fists fly, fighting back-to-back with Damian. It’s been awhile since they’ve been so in-sync, and longer still since she’s feared for their safety in battle. Well, hers anyway. Her heart’s pounding in her ears, and her fingers are shaking ever so slightly. Because she’s more than aware her skills are nowhere near those of the League of Assassins members, training with Cass, Tim and even Black Canary aside.

A fact she is soon reminded of, spinning around after knocking one unconscious to find Pru’s knife at her throat. She hadn’t even heard her approach. “Ah, crap.”

“Damian!” the young woman cries. “Stand down, else I will bleed the pretty blonde bat, starting by her throat!”

As the last assassin falls at his feet, he turns, and freezes when he realizes how close they are. How Pru will surely tear into her throat before he can even make it halfway. He practically growls as her gaze flickers towards him, as she smirks triumphantly--but that’s just the opening Steph needs. One hand pushes the knife away as the other forms a fist that connects with bald girl’s jaw. She drops like a rock, and Steph grins. “The pretty blonde bat thanks you for your backwards compliment, but thinks she should have a say in her death threats, thanks.”

When she looks up again, Damian’s right there, so close she can feel his ragged breathing on her skin. “What? Worried about little old me? Me and cue ball go way ba--” his fingers press against her chin, tilting her head up so he can examine her throat. “Damian, I’m fine,” she laughs softly, but he doesn’t let go. “Damian,” she tries again, taking his hand away herself and looking up at him. His fingers have blood on them, but it’s not much. “It’s just a scratch. It’s fine.”

“You could’ve been hurt,” he points out. “It was foolish to face them.”

“Are you kidding me?” she grins, pointing at the unconscious troupe of assassins on their roof. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we kinda kicked their ass.” Well, him, mostly. But who needed details?

Only, he’s not laughing the way she is. There’s no hint of a smile or smirk on his lips. “You could’ve been hurt,” he repeats. “Their skill level is far superior to yours, and you could’ve...”

“Been hurt, yeah, I got it,” she huffs, trying to blow a loose strand of hair from her face. “But so could you.”

“They were ordered to bring me to my mother alive.”

“Alive, yes. Unharmed? Not so much. Check a dictionary, kid, they’re pretty different.”

He says nothing as he gently tucks the strand of hair behind her ear once and for all. Only after staring at her until butterflies stage a gladiator battle in her stomach does he speak. “I would appreciate it if you ceased calling me a child--I’m quite sure I grew out of it a long time ago,” he states, before leaning down and pressing his lips to hers.

She’s so startled at first that she isn’t sure what to do; how to process the fact that he’s kissing her. Damian is kissing her! And though it starts out gentle, almost hesitant, the moment she reciprocates it, it changes. As her fingers spread out and press against his chest, his tangle in the mess of hair dangling from her half-undone ponytail. Their bodies meld together, and her hands begin snaking up his neck to deepen the kiss--and then he freezes. She feels his muscles tense under her touch and he snaps back, pulling away with wide eyes. He stares at her a moment, like she’s grown another head, and her breath hitches in her throat. “Damian?”

“B-Brown?” He’s almost shaking. “One of us must really cease having a near-death experience just to have the other kiss them.” He tries to make it sound nonchalant, like his words don’t suddenly carry so much weight, but his voice trembles along with him and she’s not sure whether to laugh or cry or hit him because he remembers! Holy flying crapsticks, he remembers! He must, because she hasn’t had the chance to tell him about the night they slept together and what lead up to it and Dick certainly hasn’t and she’s so freaking busy freaking out internally about it that she never notices the strange gun Pru’s fished from her suit.

But they certainly notice when she fires, because there’s a deafening band and a loud whistling that nearly overpowers Steph’s thoughts as some sort of large claw clamps around Damian’s middle. His eyes widen and hers narrow in on the blinking red light on top. “Damian, what--”

She doesn’t get the chance to finish. The wind picks up fast and in seconds she can hear the chopper. Panic seizes them both at the same time, eyes locked together, and they pull at the grapple almost frantically. “Damian,” she starts, but her voice cracks.

“I know,” he huffs as the chopper glides out of the dark, a nearly imperceptible hunter. “I can’t move.”

“It’s no use,” Pru chimes from the ground behind them, smiling through a rapidly fattening lip and blood-soaked teeth. Steph would feel proud of hitting her that well, if she had the time. “This is the only thing that’ll release the claw.” She holds up a small, circular device in her free hand that blinks the same way the claw does. And just as Steph even entertains the idea of ripping it from her soon-to-be-crippled hands, Pru tosses it over the side of the roof.

“NO!” She nearly leaps for it, because maybe she can make it before they scoop him up, but without her suit she’ll be a pretty blonde pancake. He grabs hold of her arm in her hesitation, and stops her with a shake of his head. “But Damian--”

“Get Grayson. He’ll know what to do.”

And then he’s dragged backwards a foot as the grapple-gun Pru’s holding connects to the chopper. Amongst the shadowy figures on board, she spots the shine of metal and blades, ready to oppose her. “Go! Now!”

“What about you? Family reunions aren’t supposed to be lethal!”

“I’ll be fine. Mother won’t harm me.”

“It’s not her I’m worried about.” His body jerks backwards as the claw drags him towards the assassins, and Steph’s hair thrashes in the wind as she yells. “I’ll find you!”

“I am certain you will!” He doesn’t struggle as they hoist him onto the chopper; as one of the black-clad assassins helps Pru collect herself--he merely smirks, like he’s in one some private joke. “I remember.”

And then he’s gone.


	4. indelible

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow I’m awful. did you know I started this well over a year ago? longer than that, really. and it’s been nearly complete for so long, I’m downright ashamed it’s taken me this long to give you the final piece. but here it is, product of my love and time and tears. I’m going to crawl into a hole and die now kthx. dedicated to my little gremlin, who has never stopped believing in me and in this monster of a fic.

**in-del-i-ble  
adjective: 1. making marks that cannot be removed**

* * *

He wakes to the sound of haphazard dripping, and the occasional groan of metal. There is an unpleasant ache in his right temple, and when he tries to move, one of his wrists voices a severe complaint. They are bound together behind him, slung over the back of the small metal chair he occupies. His vision is slightly blurred, one eye doesn’t seem to open quite as wide as the other, and he discovers the flickering light above him that sways back and forth is causing one of the peculiar noises.

The other?

Blood, trickling down his arm and falling into the empty depths of a metal bucket beneath his chair. Delightful.

Almost as delightful as his mother choosing that particular moment to make an entrance. She does so clad in long, brown and forest green robes, a sly smile woven across her lips. Her hands are folded behind her back, and she holds her head high—looking every bit like her father in the amber sunlight that filters in through an old skylight.

"Damian, my child…," she sighs, stepping towards him slowly. She does not use complimentary adjectives between those words anymore—she has not since his father and grandfather’s passing. She reserves those endearing terms for her protege, her perfect soldier, her other son—his clone. She has not done many things since their passing, really, slipping into the darkest corners of the world with the league, declaring vengeance on everything outside their underground den. Declaring vengeance on him.

She blames him for losing the only men she ever held dearly in her heart—him and Grayson and anyone with a Bat on their chest who did not uphold their promise to keep Gotham safe. Who let Ra’s Al Ghul nearly run it into the ground, and who, in turn, let Bruce sacrifice himself to save the people. He was sixteen when his mother stopped placing him on a pedestal and began hating him, when her eyes held no warmth for him ever again. When she started being a hallucination of his under the affects of fear gas.

"Mother," he acknowledges her, dragging himself from the pit his mind has burrowed itself into. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I came to see how you are faring, Habibi." She leans down, reaching out so her fingers hover above whatever wound adorns the right side of his head, not quite touching, but the smallest of hairs on his skin prickle at her nearness.

He snorts and she withdraws her hand, a derisive ‘ _tut_ ' on her lips. He catches sight of something small held in her other hand. “You had your little replacement beat me nearly to death—how do you think I am?”

Another ‘ _tut_ ’. “You may as well begin addressing Tallant as your brother, darling. After all, he is my son—more than you have been of late.”

"He is nothing more than a mindless drone that you’ve twisted to suit your needs. A copy. A second chance."

"So were you, once."

He falls quiet because the remark stings, as though she’d slapped him across the face. It would have been preferable, really. He grits his teeth as she smiles, crossing her arms. “Why have you brought me here, Mother? For revenge? To lift the vice that settled around your heart when Father and Grand—”

"You do not get to speak of him! Neither of them, not anymore!" She snaps, her composure slipping a moment as her eyes widen and her hair looks wilder. But then she is back in control, a glare carefully constructed in it’s place and he snickers.

The League follows her blindly as they did his grandfather before her, it is all they know—but Damian knows she is as unfit for the job as ever. She always has been. It is why Ra’s looked so desperately for a successor in him, in his father—even in Drake. As ruthless as she can be, as cunning as she is, Talia is betrayed by her emotions. With Bruce, with him. Faced with the ideals she was taught and those she had grown to care for, she has always made the wrong choice.

And it is an unfortunate trait he has inherited where Brown is concerned.

"If you meant to kill me, you would have done so already."

"And if I plan to have you suffer, first?" Her sickening smile lets him know she’s rather serious about this, and though the idea should make his skin crawl, it doesn’t. Because he’s got one more brilliant idea loaded on his tongue.

"You’d better make it quick, before the cavalry arrives."

"Oh, I don’t think I need to be worried about that."

"I had Alfred sew trackers into all my clothes years ago, Mother. Even if your son stripped me of them before breaking my wrist, they would still have tracked my journey here.”

"And they did. In fact, my precious Tallant was still educating you when that—" and here, her upper lip seems to curl in distaste a moment, "tramp of a girl arrived."

He tries not to let it show that his heart rate has spiked considerably at her less than pleasant mention of Brown. Because that’s the only “girl” she could mean—she’s never quite approved of his… _companionship_  with the member of the bat-family holding the lowest social standing. Nevertheless, his mother sees right through him—easy enough to do when she’s the one that taught him to bury his emotions.

"Yes, the girl is here." The use of present tense alleviates his dread only slightly. After all, this is the home of the League of Shadows and Brown is…well, Brown. "The speed with which she found you was admirable—but far less so was her walking in the front door and declaring her intent to  _rescue_  you.”

He wants to facepalm. Or groan. Or both.

"The Shadows surrounded her in moments." The feeling of dread returns to press against his chest. "Fret not, Habibi— _you_ rescued  _her_.”

Wait—what?

It is then he notices the small device she holds in her hand again—a remote. Her fingers tap at it, and a small screen slides free of the paneling in the wall behind her, flickering to life. And there is Brown, parading around in civilian clothing—it’s not her Knightwing suit, strangely—and seemingly touring the grounds with…with  _him_!

He knows his neutral expression has slipped when his mother begins cackling softly. “She’s taken quite a shine to Tallant. I had not realized you and she were so involved, but judging from the way she received him—”

“Enough!” he snaps, slamming the chair legs down beneath him in anger. Pain erupts in his wrist as a result, but he ignores it, eyes focused on the suddenly-so-interesting ground.

“It burns you, doesn’t it? To see that she is deceived so easily, to know that even the woman you  _care_  for cannot tell the difference.”

She’s right, though he would never admit it. Because if Brown is unable to see through Tallant’s mimicry of him, who will? Grayson? Pennyworth? Though they have raised him, shaped him, spent years observing him in detail, they do not know him as… _intimately_  as she does. If she cannot differentiate, what hope does he have that they will? What does it matter when someone who acts as he does can simply waltz in and replace him? And it is then that he realizes this is precisely what he plans to do—what his mother has planned.

“Ah, that is the look I awaited. You’ve figured it out, have you?”

“That you plan to have him replace me not just as your son, but as…everything else?”

“He is deadly, skilled, and obedient. He will be everything you were not.”

“Yes, the perfect slave.” He tries to sound condescending, disgusted, but it doesn’t faze her. “The perfect  _tool_.”

“He will do what you never could. He will infiltrate the circle of bats as a son, a prodigy, a lover—” a low, guttural growl starts in the back of his throat, rolling forwards. “And then he will rip them apart, a dragon in a den of lions.”

His gaze remains locked on the screen, watching Brown interact with his copy as his mother leans close by his ear, her voice laden with triumph. “This is why I have not killed you yet, my child. I will wait, and allow you to watch as your family is torn away from you, as everyone you care dearly for is destroyed—and at the end, when all the bats and birds have fallen from their mighty perch, and you have nothing left but the pain and the guilt of being unable to help them,  _then_  will have Tallant kill you.”

She leaves him then. In silence, he watches the screen until he can no longer keep the rage down, and manages to hop the chair around so he faces the corner. The pain in his wrist flares up, but he does nothing to soothe it. He does not know how long he stays there, head bowed, but he does not care.

At least, he doesn’t until he hears the door creak open, and voices he has dreaded hearing fill the room. “I would not approach him—though it took me little time to subdue him, he has still been trained by my mother and the League—he is dangerous.”

"Yeah, yeah, you’ve told me three times now, Dami. I got it—don’t touch the scary clone-boy." His stomach twists; the way she says his name actually sickens him. He hears the footsteps approach, hers as loud and stomping and un-ladylike as ever, his calm and calculated. She shuffles closer, and warmth lingers on his arm as she brushes past. "It’s like Terminator meets Stepford Wives. It’s real creepy, y’know, how much you look almost exactly alike."

And suddenly, she is there in front of him, hair falling in golden waves and looking far better than he imagines he does. He supposes the sight of her should comfort him, should bring him the pleasant feeling that he had attributed to being rescued. But he isn’t being rescued, because she hasn’t a clue that he’s the real Damian, she hasn’t any idea how foolish she is, how this will have ruined everything, how—

She leans down to his eye-level, seemingly examines him a moment as he looks up, and  _winks_.

—how maybe she isn’t so uselessly stupid after all. “Almost. Exactly. Alike,” she repeats, before he hears the faint sound of humming, and spots the black hair clip by her ear that is anything but a fashionable accessory. “I’m pretty sure it’s time for _Mambo Number Five_.”

The skylight above them explodes with a nearly ear-shattering boom, and in drops three figures, one all in black, the second in red and the third toting guns and a worn-out leather jacket as if it isn’t the most un-aerodynamic costume ever. Tallant stares wide-eyed a moment before one of them moves on him, and his self-preservation instincts kick in. Of course, Todd is the first. “C’mere, Clone Boy. Let’s dance.”

If it weren’t such a ridiculously cliche movie trope, he’d tell Brown he could kiss her right now. “We need to stop meeting like this,” she hums, lips pulling up at the corners for a smile. As the commotion starts, she leans closer and begins untying the bonds on his wrists. He hisses once as the pain bites at him, and she hesitates, a questioning look thrown his way. Her fingers brush lightly against the broken one, and she makes a face. “Ow.”

"Yes. Very."

"Well, let’s get you outta here so Alfred can take a look at it, yeah?" She smiles, an optimist in the face of overwhelming obstacles, as usual. Surely she must realize that escape will be difficult once Tallant is no longer the only assassin out for their blood? "Tim, how’s it looking?"

As the ropes fall away, Damian regains mobility, and shifts in his seat to see that while Todd and Grayson have his clone engaged, Drake has positioned himself by the door, holo-screen protruding from his gauntlet. “They’re close. Either the explosion was louder than I thought it would be, or Jason’s guns are.”

"It’s prolly just his mouth," Grayson chuckles, smashing his elbow into Tallant’s nose. It is in moments like these, fighting with them, that he is truly himself, and not the dark, brooding knight he has fashioned himself into for Father’s sake.

"What’s that about my mouth, Dick?" Todd speaks up, grinning wickedly as he slams the barrel of his gun against the clone’s head.

"It never stops!" Brown chimes in, her gentle touch snaking beneath Damian’s arms and helping him to his feet.

"Your assistance is unnecessary—I am capable of walking on my own."

"I know, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need a little boost. You kinda look like hell."

"Yes, well, you took your time."

She frowns, for a moment looking confused. “Did you think I enjoyed being paraded around by some cheap copy of you? Acting like it was _you_?”

He huffs. “And how exactly  _did_  you tell the difference between my precious…brother and I?”

She bites at her bottom lip. “Is this really the time? We’ve got your mother’s flying monkeys on the incoming and a rescue to see through.” He continues to stare, looking unimpressed with her efforts to avoid the question. So she shrugs as nonchalantly as she can, despite the fact that he can see her shaking ever-so-slightly. “He may sound like you and act like you, but he doesn’t look one hundred percent like you. Clone you all she wants, she can’t plan for scars that are more recent than him being flushed from his tube.”

Her fingers press lightly against the skin beneath his eye—and the small, puckered scar, a remnant from that night with Black Mask. This small fact should appease him, clear his mind, but she stands quite close to him—as close as she would have had to stand to  _him_ , and so, it upsets him only that much more. She squirms briefly before snapping, “fine—he kissed me, okay?! He kissed me and it wasn’t like you and that’s how I knew!”

"Jesus  _Christ_. Hey, lovebirds, how’s about you save your squabbling for the ride home, yeah?” Todd snickers. “We’re movin’.”

Grayson slams his fist into Tallant’s face one last time and the clone drops. He shakes it off and glances over at them. “Well, you heard him—let’s go!”

"Sir, yes, sir," Brown chuckles, saluting him before reaching for Damian’s arm. He pulls away from her touch, frowning, and it elicits a roll of her eyes. "Seriously?" Behind her, Grayson tosses a grappling line up through the shattered skylight.

At the door, Drake finishes fiddling with something Damian can’t quite make out with one eye acting up, but when it whirs to life a moment later, he surmises it is either a pressurized bomb, or more likely; a pressurized  _lock_  that will buy them a small window of time. “C’mon, Grumpy, we’ll talk about this once all five little birds hi-ho-home,” she says, and just for a moment, the Disney reference entertains him—because unlike the past few weeks, he actually  _gets_  it.

But the moment passes as soon as they make it topside, in the winding gardens that surround the skylight and cover the underground quarters of the League that his mother’s mansion hides. Assassins flood from the windows and rooftops, and the group of them form a wary circle. “So much for that—,” Drake begins, before an explosion rocks the ground at their feet. Smoke billows up around them, and he sees the hint of a ridiculous smile plastered on Red Robin’s lips.

It will not matter, in a moment. As the Shadows inch closer, Damian grits his teeth, knowing his wrist may not last much longer—afterall, he’s trailing blood everywhere. “It’s starting to look like Mordor’s unhappy we simply walked in, boys. And  _this_  is more like the reception I was expecting,” Brown mumbles, her nerves leaking through her quivering voice. She takes a step closer to him, knocking their elbows together, but he does not look over.

“M’sure we could have one of these fine ladies give us a kiss, if that’d even the playing field for you, Blondie.”

“Shut up, Jason.”

“I’m just saying! We deserve to get in on the action this time.”

Damian’s hands ball into fists as his blood boils. If the assassins do not leap soon, he will—and strangle the life out of Todd. “ _Jason_ ,” comes Grayson’s warning tone. The mass of black leather and sharp knives closes in, and he feels Brown inch ever closer. He catches sight of Drake in his peripherals, watching her, and it fills him with a sort of sick delight.

Because no matter what happens now—no matter what has happened, leading up to this—she came after him. She came after him as she said she would. She chose  _him_.

“Hey, Damian?” There is no lightness in her voice, none of the usual cheer and bubble. And the lack of nickname…he snaps to attention. “You know I love me some cliches and all, but this, well…,” he glances over to be met with a familiar glint in her eyes, a tenderness that does very unpleasant things to his stomach and chest. The kind of look he remembers her having that night, after Black Mask and before everything else.

He opens his mouth to warn her away from whatever ridiculous train of thought she seems to be boarding, but no sound escapes his lips. It’s a stagnant pause, and he thinks it’s because part of him  _wants_  to hear what she has to say. Part of him knows, really. But he wants to hear her say it, just this once—even if it’s the only time she ever does.

The Shadows close in, and his fingernails scrape against his palm as he attempts to choose what to watch; her or them. But when she speaks his eyes instantly focus on her quivering lips, the painful wrinkle in her brow, the way her hands clench and unclench at her sides. And without thinking, he reaches out and twines their fingers together wordlessly. He squeezes once, lightly; telling her to press on.

“Is this really the time?” Drake grunts, and Damian’s quite sure he’s never wanted to punch the boy more in his life.

But Brown ignores him,  _her_  fingernails digging into the palm of his hand and causing the red to fade from the edges of his vision. “I’m sorry I didn’t pull my head outta my butt sooner, kid. I’m sorry I didn’t have the sense to stay that night. I’m sorryI  _hurt you_ ,” she says it so simply, so  _mournfully_ , that he almost hasn’t the will to keep from surrendering right then and there. But he needs to hear it from her lips, once and for all, to assure himself this is real and not some cruel, twisted joke his mother has concocted.

It’s when she lets loose a laugh, contrasted against the tears in her eyes, that he knows this is it. “I’m sorry that I didn’t realize that I—”

_I think I may have loved you, once  
I think you did_

Now, when he opens his mouth, there are words building on his tongue, thoughts and feelings threatening to roll outwards (if he  _did_  feelings, that is.) But again, he doesn’t quite manage to make sounds. And this time it has nothing to do with him—and everything to do with the the two-hundred pounds of black-clad assassin that has barrelled into his side, knocked the air from his lungs, and pushed him to the ground.

Brown and Grayson call for him, while Todd swears rather colorfully and relatiates by firing at the nearest Shadow, and Drake slams his bo staff into another. The one atop him hisses, and the lips that curl out from under the black fabric are distinctly masculine, so Damian feels nothing when he smashes his forehead into the man’s nose. He pushes him off, noting that the others now have their hands full as well.

He rolls to his feet, ready to pounce, but someone else hits him before he gets the chance, someone bigger and stronger. Fists hit him in the kidneys, hard enough to have him doubling over, the pain leaving him sick and lightheaded. As if he hadn’t been from bloodloss already, thank you. He has enough sense about him to duck the next blow, stumbling backwards and hitting the ground, hard. Pain tears into his wrist, and he thinks bitterly that this is it, this pathetic excuse for a fight is what does him in as the assassin looms above him, sneering.

Then he hears a large  _crack_ , and the man’s eyes roll upwards behind his mask, shortly before he tumbles forward and hits the ground, face-first.

“Excuse you, interrupting a girl when she’s about to life-or-death tell a guy she loves him is a real dick move.” This time, he does not grouse when the petite blonde helps him up (partly because the kick she had just delivered to his attacker’s head had been rather noteworthy.)

“Okay?” she asks, and he graces her with a half-grunt in response. He can pinpoint the moment she refrains from rolling her eyes at him. “And your head?”

“Fine.” She smiles radiantly, and the brief pause that fighting off the first wave of Shadows has given them allows him to think. As the churning feeling in his stomach skyrockets into his throat, he grips her hand tightly, and lifts his chin towards his mother, who stands atop the stone staircase on the other side of the courtyard, watching. Her assassins have stilled their approach, and now circle the group of Robins like a pack of wolves on the scent of blood. His damaged wrist aches in protest as he forms a fist, blood trickling into his palm, and he thinks that this isn’t much differently, really.

“What’re they waitin’ for,” Todd grumbles, his fingers hovering over the trigger impatiently. His desire for a fight has not been sated, evidently.

“Me,” Damian says, and feels Brown inch ever closer. “They’re waiting for me to surrender. To give myself up in exchange for your lives.”

“Only they don’t do mercy,” Drake says matter-of-factly.

“Precisely.”

“C’mon, Debbie Downers, one of us might make it outta here alive.” Todd sounds almost gleeful. “And my chances with these guys are  _preeeetty_  good.”

“Enough, Jason,” Grayson snaps, finally.

The only one who says nothing is Brown, who stands next to him, the same glint still burning in her eyes. But he has already made up his mind. He isn’t going to play his mother’s games anymore. She resists when he slips his hand from hers, and she sports a painfully confused look that he barely brings himself to ignore. He has long since considered her a weakness for him, the night with Scarecrow being a shining example of it.

But it is now, with an incomparable number of Shadows bearing down upon them and his mother’s smug grin making his blood boil, that he realizes she is his strength, too. Words he would never utter aloud, but he’s certain are evident on his face as he steps away from her, from the other boys, and towards his mother.

He makes it two feet before Brown collides with him; lips, body and—well, she’s the one for cliches, not him. Her mouth covers his in an instant, hard and fast, and she practically inhales him as she presses herself close. The faint smell of pomegranate fills his nostrils as his fingers tangle in her hair, and her hands find the collar of his shirt, tightening into fists and holding on. This is nothing like the times she has kissed him before. This is focused, full of need, and it feels for a moment like the world has dropped away around them.

When she pulls away, her forehead pausing briefly against his, she whispers, “I need you, y’know.”

“I know.”

When he turns away from her, finally, he sees that the smug look is gone from his mother’s lips, now. Instead, it snakes across his own. He squares his shoulders, steps forward, and as he speaks, his voice reverberates through the whole courtyard. “Go ahead, mother. Finish whatever it is you think you’ve started. It matters to me no longer. You cannot make me suffer by hurting them—they are not weak, they will not break as easily as your toys, and I have long outgrown being afraid of you.”

_I am happy_. The words fill in the gaps that his voice doesn’t, and though he doesn’t say them aloud (he doesn’t need to say much aloud, with his mother), he sees the realization wash over her face. Wrinkle lines deepen, anger flares brightly in her eyes, and he must say he’s impressed she retains her composure. The Al Ghul line is not known for it, afterall.

“You have outgrown your fear of me?” She looks infuriated, but a smirk winds its way across her lips, different from the one she’s worn so far; different from his own. This is not smug, nor winning—this is some twisted form of pride. “You surprise me, child. Though, I suppose you are not a child anymore, are you?” A pause, where her lips part wider, and her voice rises so that everyone—him, the Robins, and the shadows in her court—can hear her. “Be afraid a while longer,  _Habibi_. Be afraid enough to _run_.”

She does not say  _there is hope for you yet, my son_ _,_  but she does not need to. It’s clear as day, to him. Because now she’s seen that he has something to fight for—something to live for. She knows a weakness that could break him, or a strength she could use to mold him into the leader she seeks. Whichever way she plays it, she knows now that she still has puppet strings to pull and the means to manipulate his life again, as she did when he was young.

If they leave now, things are far from over, and part of him thinks,  _damn his mother to hell, finish it now_ _._  It’d be far simpler—far safer for those standing by him. Grayson clears his throat, and when Damian turns to look at him, a question hangs in his eyes. He knows the choice being offered. He knows how Talia works—after all, he pulled Damian from her clutches once before.  _What do you choose?_

A fight to the death, or a lifetime of looking over your shoulder, wondering when she’ll surface next. The choice is simple, really.

He exhales through clenched teeth, wiggles the fingers in his hand to assure his wrist hasn’t cost him their use yet, and steps forward again.

"What’re you doing, Damian?" Brown questions from behind him, and he hears the dread in her voice. "Dick, what is he doing?"

"Something I should have long ago," he says. "Ending my mother’s hold on me."

"You mean to challenge me? Oh, Damian, please. Don’t make me laugh." Yet still, a soft, cascading laugh ripples forth from her lips. "I taught you everything you  _know_ , boy.”

"Not everything." He feigns nonchalance, even throwing in a half-hearted drawl as he continues. "I am the son of the bat. I grew up surrounded by acrobats and ninja and some of the most—" here, his eyes drift back to Brown and the others, "inventive and improvisational of the bat clan. I have learned much, mother. It is time I showed you." He raises one hand—the one that functions at one hundred percent—and bows, a gesture simple enough in nature that extends his challenge. The courtyard is eerily quiet, at a standstill, but he’s quite sure he can still hear her grinding her teeth together.

"You know what it means to challenge me, Damian."

His brows set in a hard line. “I do.”

She looks for a moment disappointed, like she expected better of him, but it’s gone an instant later, replaced by a hunger so fierce she resembles a caged lionness who has not been allowed to hunt in months, years even. Which would unfortunately make him prey. “Then I accept.”

Murmurs split the crowd of Shadows. Emotions hidden behind masks, they back away from the bats, creating a ring at their center, encircling the remains of the skylight and garden. They’re tense, on edge—it has been quite a long time since the Al Ghul line has seen unrest like this.

Talia descends the steps slowly, with painstaking elegance as they all look on with bated breath. But not Damian. No, he knows it’s all for show, a delay meant to fill the stage with suspense, so that when they’re all least expecting it, she’ll leap. It’s meant to draw out his rapidly thinning patience, to goad him into striking first. It should make him impatient, sloppy, but he’s played this game with more of Gotham’s filth than he cares to remember—and he’s gotten very good at winning.

It’s a slow jog when he takes off, but an all out sprint once he picks up speed. He can already see the smirk painting itself across his mother’s lips, that lioness grin stretching wider and wider as he nears, as the stairs melt away and she reaches even with the rest of the courtyard. Then, at the last second, she disappears, smoke amongst a sea of black. He sees the knife pierce the air where she’d been expecting him to be, where he’d veered from as she made her move, and instead struck a Shadow he’d swapped places with.

“Very good, darling—using my own tricks against me,” he hears her voice say from the left a moment before she comes at him from the right. He has to fold into a crouch to avoid the second knife, but the third, this time in her hand, grazes his arm. Damian grits his teeth against the sting, and swings out a leg, narrowly missing her. He rolls back, away from her, using the momentum to spring to his feet and sidestep the third knife as it arcs past him.

“If I didn’t know any better, mother, I’d say you weren’t even trying.”

He hears the mix of Todd and Brown in his voice, and feels his lips peel back into a grin that’s almost Grayson. Though taunting, he speaks the truth. She isn’t trying—at least, not to kill him. The knives are all warnings, filled with the same disappointment he glimpsed when he stood his ground instead of running, tail between his legs. She is still giving him the option to walk away, to continue the endless back and forth game they’ve been playing for a handful of years. It’s all still just a show.

But he meant it when he said he outgrew it long ago.

“It is a good thing you know better, then.” Standing just a few feet from him, across the open courtyard, Talia’s composure remains undaunted, perfectly well put-together, but her eyes betray her. Palms flat, he beckons her forward, then bends at the knees, lowering enough to steady himself. It is a moment still before she moves, as she ponders her next move and takes in his stance, calculating the weak points she will strike.

Damian never gives her the chance. She’s halfway to him when he slips down through the shattered skylight, and hangs from it using his bad wrist. A curse hisses past his clenched teeth as his good arm reaches up, snags the folds of her robes, and pulls. He hears the satisfying thud as she hits the ground, and wastes no time in swinging himself back up.

Only to be met with the heel of her shoe.

The back of his head connects with a pane of glass not decimated by Drake’s bomb, and he hears it crack. Everything spins out of focus a moment, blurs and twists, but then Talia’s looming over him, and he flashes back to the alley the night Crane attacked. This is not a place he wants to be. He rolls away from her as she moves to stomp him into the ground, and the force of her kick shatters the glass he’d weakened.

His mother falls forward as it gives out beneath her, and the move is the only thing that saves her from the shard of glass clutched tightly in his hand. He backpedals with his good arm, stands in tandem with her, and catches sight of her split lip and sliced cheek; a result of this fall or the first, he does not know.

“If I didn’t know better, my child, I would say you are trying  _too hard_ ,” she remarks casually. “Tell me, is the wrist Tallant broke failing you already?”

“Tallant?” he tries to muster the most infuriating grin possible, all while the pain in his wrist flares up as if to spitefully confirm her words. “You mean the clone lying in a pool of his own blood beneath you?”

She laughs, quite derisively. “If you mean to shock me, Damian, you efforts are best directed somewhere else. He outlived his purpose the moment your little  _friends_  arrived.”

And it’s the way she spits out the word friends that gives him an opening. Because deny it all she wants, she cares for Tallant as she cares for him, as she has cared for every copy she has raised and called  _son_. She is, at her core, a mother, no matter how poorly she wears the title.

“My  _family_ , you mean,” he nods. “The people who have done more for me in the last eight years then you could have in a lifetime. The ones who have taken yet another  _child_  from you.”

The words are enough this time, enough to make her look down, through the shattered glass and lingering smoke to catch a glimpse of her broken son. Enough to give Damian the opening he needs. The glass held tightly in his weak hand races towards her faster than his feet carry him.

She just barely catches it before it strikes her shoulder, just wide of her heart. He sees the blood blossom on her hand even at this distance, and watches her lips part, no doubt to mock the poor aim his damaged wrist gives him, but he’s upon her already and thus, she is not given the time.

With one move, he’s pushed her hand towards her, forcing the glass shard into her skin, and in the next, his leg has swept hers from beneath her. This time, he hears a crack that isn’t a window pane, and watches her eyes widen as pain blooms at the base of her skull and shoulder both.

Were he borrowing humor from Brown or Todd again, or even Grayson on a good day, he might offer to help her with the glass shard aloud before ripping it free of her shoulder. As it is, he wishes to be done with this dance before his knees buckle entirely, or exhaustion and pain cripple him further.

“Enough, mother,” Damian breathes, the sharp edge trained at her throat as he crouches by her. “It is over.”

She smiles crookedly with the busted lip. “Not quite.”

With a sigh, he steps back, keeping a firm grip on the glass without drawing blood. “I will extend to you the same courtesy you have given me more than once today—I will not kill you. But know that I could. Know that I wish to end this now, to sever all ties and keep the League away from me, from my family, and from all of Gotham.”

“You ask for much for someone who will not finish things with tradition,” she says.

“I swore an oath when I was accepted by father and my brothers, and I have not broken it in the years since. I will not waste that on your foolish traditions, mother.”

There is a stagnant pause, a silence that stretches past them and rolls outwards, reaching the Shadows and bats, cementing his words and determination with every breath. “Am I understood?”

A longer moment still before his mother answers. “Very clearly.”

He does not try to mask the relief he feels. His shoulders drop and his jaw unclenches and he murmurs a thank you in his head he will not speak aloud. In response, his muscles and bones ache, finally voicing his exhaustion as a complaint he feels all over.

His mistake is giving in to them.

Anxious to get away from this place, to never see his mother and her puppets ever again, he turns away from her. He faces the family he has chosen as he turns his back on her for the final time, and that is when she strikes.

“Damian!” Brown’s warning registers alongside Grayson’s, and he pivots, releasing the shard of glass he’d kept a firm grip on. Flung from his good hand this time, it finds its mark without interruption, while the knife she’d thrown, the one the others had seen coming (that he should have, too) goes wide and misses him entirely.

It’s all instinct, reflex and he barely realizes it is over at once. He is back at his mother’s side in an instant, hands hovering over the shard now embedded in her chest, over the stream of blood blooming around it. Though the lines in her face indicate pain, the smile sitting neatly on her lips reads happiness, especially when accompanied by the twinkle in her eyes.

“Thank you,” she breathes, her hand coming to rest gently on his cheek. “You have always been the man I’d hoped you’d be, molded not only by your father and I, but the others as well. A man worthy of the League’s respect, and of a mother’s pride.”

“You did not have to,” he says, and the part of him that’s still a little boy desperate for his mother’s love aches. “I did not want—”

“I know,” she smiles, and this time, it is sad. “But I did. I can see them now; father and my beloved. It has been…so long. How happy they will be when I tell them…of the man…the leader…you’ve become. I am only sorry…I had to take so much from you to make…you…so…”

He wants to say a million and one things to her, to blame or thank her, both. But no sound escapes his lips, and all too soon her eyes roll back. “Mother?” he tries, though he knows it’s futile. He shakes her, as though waking from slumber. “Mother?”

If his voice quivers with the memory of being sixteen and being told his father and grandfather were dead, he does not notice. Because then, it was not his choice. Then, he was not in control—not like now. Now, with his mother’s blood on his hands, a fate he never wanted for either of them.

“Damian!” For one ridiculous moment, he thinks Talia has played him one last time, but then it clicks that there’s distance between him and his name, and that the speaker is distinctly masculine. He looks back towards Grayson, and he knows at once something is wrong. His eyes are wide and he is crouched along with Drake, while Todd looks down, his mouth set in a hard line. And Brown—

“No!” He’s on his feet in an instant, her name catching in his throat, constricting.

_I am only sorry…I had to take so much from you to make…you…so…_

His mother’s words hit him with considerable force, and he suddenly finds it very difficult to breathe. He sees for a moment her final knife, thrown wide, and knows with certainty it hit its intended target after all.

“No,” he repeats, knees hitting the ground somewhere in between his brothers, arms reaching forward, fingers almost shaking. He feels the knife before he sees it, and Drake, who caught her before she hit the ground (making this an occasion where Damian would rather thank him than punch him), slides her somewhat hesitantly in Damian’s arms. “Brown…”

This time he’s sure he hears his voice quake, much as it did the night he found her in the alley in a pool of her own blood. Now, it takes him a moment to focus, to notice there is no blood and rather than fading, her pulse has doubled. And when she groans, it sounds annoyed, not pained.

“Crap, that hurt,” she mutters, soft and plaintive. Slowly, she comes alive in his arms, eyes opening and hands sliding to the offending blade’s hilt, where they rest on his. She meets his shock with bright blue eyes and a radiant smile that’s somewhere between mischievous and abundantly proud of herself.

“B-Brown! But I thought—” words fail him.

“What? That I was dead?” she sits up straight, fingers slipping past his to clasp the blade. “I thought we agreed we were going to stop almost dying just to get the other person to—”

He completes her sentence by pressing his lips to hers, and hears what he assumes to be Grayson tapping Drake over the head when the latter curses. Damian breaks the kiss once Todd begins catcalling and watches a red that matches the idiot’s helmet creep across Brown’s cheeks.

He doesn’t wait to ask how; he pulls at her shirt until it lifts to reveal that despite his initial belief, she  _did_  wear her suit. Or at least, the reinforced bodysuit that did a fair job of stopping the knife in its path. “Wow,” she says with a laugh, playfully pushing at his chest. “Someone needs to teach you boundaries again, D.”

There is a beat during which he is acutely aware of her hand pressing against his chest, before the rest of the world catches up and the smile falls from eyes no longer focused on him, but past him. “Apparently the stalker squad needs a refresher lesson, too.”

Slowly, he and Brown stand to join the others, and Damian turns to see the crowd of ninja closing in as one. Some drop to their knee, while others bow their heads—but all acknowledge what has happened.

“Are they bowing to us?” Todd whistles again, and the grin that stretches ear to ear spell all kinds of trouble.

“They’re bowing to  _him_ ,” Drake nods in Damian’s direction, barely masking his disdain.

“Well, that’s creepy,” Brown says, and squeezes his hand. Two among them step forward to stand on either side of Talia, while Pru emerges at the front, dropping to a knee before him. “Why are they being creepy?”

“He challenged the Demon’s Head for the throne. He won. The League of Shadows recognizes its new master,” she speaks slowly, deliberately, and by the way Brown bristles beside him, she has caught the condescending tone. It probably helps that he spent most of his early teenage years addressing her similarly.

“The kid didn’t challenge her for anything other than a ticket out of crazy town,” Todd sounds confused.

“And, y’know, our lives,” Brown mutters.

“It did not matter,” Damian sighs. “The moment I issued the challenge, I knew what it meant. To face my mother for our freedom, or anything simpler, it would not have made a difference.”

He looks out at the crowd of Shadows, then, and is unsure how to feel about it. If his mother had offered him the world at ten, or twelve, perhaps even his darkest moments at sixteen, he’d have taken it. But nearly half a lifetime playing by his father’s rules alongside bird and bat, alongside  _family_ , has changed him, and as a jaded man of nineteen he wants none of it. He wants no part in the world that orchestrated the death of his father, grandfather, and now, his mother.

He sighs a second time, rolling his sore shoulder as he ponders what to say. He understands that this should be an honor, that it is his birthright, but it leaves such a bitter taste in his mouth. “I do not wish to disrespect my mother’s choices,” he begins, raising his voice so it reaches them all. “But I hold no loyalty to the League and it’s archaic traditions. I have no use for assassins and ninja at my beckon call. My duty is to Gotham and it’s people.”

“The Shadows are yours,” Pru says, insistent. As though he needs only to be reminded a handful of times more to believe, and to accept.

“No,” he shakes his head, gaze level. “They—you—are now your own people.” He takes a step forward, towards them, glancing at Brown as he does. She smiles hesitantly, unsure of his next move. But she needn’t worry; he knows what he wants, now. He knows that she wants the same thing, and he has the opportunity to experience happiness.

So he takes the leap. “Henceforth, the League of Shadows is no more. No longer an entity meant for death, an insidious thought meant to cripple the weak and strangle the poor.” What little he can see of them beneath masks and hoods looks conflicted. “You are not Shadows, anymore. You are  _people_. Your own, free people, independent and capable of making choices for yourselves, and not for a leader. Capable of finding a purpose other than killing.”

"You are…welcome in Gotham," he continues, careful of his words. He glances briefly at Grayson as he speaks, gauging his reaction. "As long as you abide by the rules my father and brothers have taught me, as long as you keep the peace rather than disrupt it. As long as you do this, my doors, and my father’s legacy, are open to you." Grayson smiles, and he knows he has done well.

An eerie quiet settles in the courtyard as he finishes. “Seek life.  _Enjoy_  it.”

Pru’s brows crease together, and she speaks when the others won’t. “An easier given task than undertaken. Most of us were raised Shadows, si—” she hesitates, the word catching in her mouth thickly when he offers her a reprimanding glare. When she speaks again, it sounds as though it’s with great difficulty. “ _Damian_.”

At least it’s a start.

“I’d be happy to show you how,” Todd speaks up then, and Damian doesn’t need to turn to know there’s a disgusting leer painted on his features. “I’m an excellent teacher.”

“No,” Damian says firmly, looking around the crowd of Shadows again. “Should they need help adjusting, perhaps Drake would be a more suitable companion. He understands the inept social skills found in the everyday, bland human being, at the very least.”

There is a long, drawn-out moment as his words sink in. Then, both Grayson and Todd are doubled-over, practically clinging to each other’s stomachs as laughter ripples outwards from them. Drake smiles thinly at the joke, while his brothers continue to howl about the kid actually  _making_  one. They laugh pretty much the whole way home, until Brown pulls the van over and tells them to shut up, or walk. Damian nearly tells her he loves her, then. But he doesn’t.

Instead, he waits.

And he waits hours. Long after everyone’s gone off to change out of their suits and clean up. After Pennyworth’s accosted him with needle and thread and held him still with a gaze so sharp, Damian thinks it’d be wise to stay in this chair, maybe until the end of time. After a shower in which he scalds off what is likely an entire three layers of skin and curses his wrist until he’s blue in the face. After they’ve all found their way to the kitchen and shared a few drinks in celebration of, well, not dying, surprisingly enough.

After mostly everyone has shuffled off to sleep for three days. And as much as Damian would like to join them, he finds it might be rather difficult when he finally limps to his bedroom and finds he has company. Clad in what might be the same shorts and tee as the night after Black Mask, Brown sits on the edge of his bed, hands pooled in her lap.

The smile that paints itself across her mouth is hesitant, almost shy, and crooked at the corner where her lip is split. “Hi.”

“Hello.” He ducks his head when she pats the mattress next to her, but quietly makes his way over anyway. When he sits, her fingers brush against his, carefully plucking the half-empty glass of bourbon he’d brought from the kitchen from his grasp. Damian watches as she downs it, then frowns. “That was for the pain.”

He lifts his wrist, tightly held in a temporary cast, as proof. She smiles, a nervous tremble to her lip, but her eyes are bright, fixed on him. “M’pretty sure Alfred gave you painkillers,” she says, and it almost sounds scolding. “Mixing’s a no-no, Little D.” Yes, definitely scolding.

“Pennyworth gave us  _all_  painkillers,” Damian points out.

“Did he?” One brow quirks, and there’s a loose shrug of her shoulders. “Must’ve slipped my mind.”

A long, heavy silence settles between them, and he notices Brown fidget uncomfortably, her fingers tightening around the glass she still holds. She sucks in a shaky breath, then; “I’m sorry.”

He blinks, because that certainly hadn’t been what he’d expected. “Sorry? What for?” Quick to help, his brain supplies him with the image of her and his clone-brother tangled together, of his blood boiling, rage bubbling in his throat when he’d realized she’d kissed Tallant, thinking it was him. He nearly winces when he remembers the bite of his words, accusing her when she’d only come to rescue him.

Brown opens her mouth to speak, but he grunts, shaking his head. “Don’t be. It was stupid of me to be angry with you.”

“What?” She looks confused, so he clears his throat and elaborates.

“It was the most reasonable course of action at the time, I see that now. And it worked out in the end, I think.” He tries very hard not to pose it as a question.

“Well, yeah, but—”

“If anyone should be apologizing, it is me. I overreacted and didn’t realize you were trying to—” he presses, watching as her confusion dissolves into a frown, quickly betrayed by the pitying smile on her lips. “What?”

“I don’t think we’re talking about the same things, Damian,” she says, and she sounds sort of sad.

“What?” he repeats, and it earns him a laugh, sweet and soft as it tumbles from her lips.

Slowly, she leans across him to place the glass on his bedside table, then scoots closer, her thigh coming to rest against his. “I wasn’t apologizing for what happened with your…clone,” the word comes out careful as she dances around using something closer to home. “I figured that was kind of, a given, or whatevs.” She lifts her hand to wave it off, but he notices the tremble in her fingers as they settle against his thigh.

And he certainly notices the way his skin warms at her touch, a spark that zigzags through his body like lightning, igniting familiarity in his bones. It reminds him all too easily of the night after Black Mask, of the last time they’d been alone in his room, of the slow-building inferno her touch had started in his gut. And that’s when it clicks.

“Oh,” he manages to say, but it’s thick against his tongue. He feels like an idiot.

“Oh,” Brown mimics, but the word curves hesitantly upwards with her lips. “I’ve never really…apologized for that night. For running out on you. At least, not properly. I tried the other night on the roof, and again today but, well…”

The trembling worsens, so he laces their fingers together, squeezing tightly, content to find that Pennyworth’s painkillers numb the pain in his wrist. “We are here now. You don’t have to—”

“I do,” she cuts him off, and her laugh’s just as shaky. “I was a total coward, and a selfish one at that. I ran off without ever thinking of how it would affect you, of how you’d feel.” Her lips purse, her brows knit together, and a redness builds in her cheeks. “Actually, no, that’s  _exactly_  why I took off.”

“You called me Stephanie that night, you remember?” She seems to realize it’s a ridiculous question before the words even form in his throat. “Of course you do,” she laughs again, shaking her head. She bites at her bottom lip, then sighs. “You’d never called me that before, and I guess I just…I realized what that meant—what it  _could_  mean, anyway—and I panicked.”

“I was afraid of what you felt, but mostly, I was afraid of what I felt. Because I didn’t know what that was and—and I didn’t want to hurt you if I didn’t—if it wasn’t…,” the words fall away from her, and she grimaces. He can’t help but smile, softly. “And I know that’s exactly what I ended up doing, so double stupid points to me.”

Damian reaches forward, fingers held against her chin, turning her to face him. “You’re not stupid,” he says, and in their proximity, he feels her breath ghost over his lips as she laughs.

“I think ten to sixteen-year-old you would have to disagree.” It’s an easy joke, a comfortable slip of the tongue to help defuse tension, perhaps even shake the serious tone, and Damian’s having none of it.

“I wasn’t kidding,” and when she grins almost childishly, a brow raising into her hairline, he’s the one who feels stupid. “Now, I mean. I’m not kidding  _now_.”

“Mhmm.”

He huffs, and turns away from her with a roll of his eyes. She’s beginning to grate on his nerves again. It’s a moment before he feels her fingertips curl against his jaw, drawing him back to her. He offers very little resistance, and his eyes lock together with hers; bright and sparkling and blue. “M’sorry,” Brown whispers. Damian grunts in response, low and guttural, the tip of his nose ghosting against hers. “About everything.”

“As am I,” he responds, leaning into her touch, his forehead pressing against hers. There’s a beat before he closes the distance between their lips, too. His good hand slides up to tangle in her hair, while the other squeezes the fingers intertwined with his. She seems to melt into him, tilting her head to deepen the kiss, and she pushes back fervently. His back hits a nest of pillows with a gentle thud, and her arms circle around him, pressing her closer as Brown takes control of the kiss.

Damian’s lips part and she runs a tongue across them, heat pouring out of her skin, wrapping around him like a safety blanket he has no intention of abandoning. Her fingers dance at the hem of his pants, just beneath his shirt, and he responds with a groan. She settles above him, and he reaches up, hands ghosting a path from her thighs up to her waist. He stops when they meet her ribs, and as she moves, her elbow knocking against his bandaged wrist, he lets out a curse, a simple hiss between his teeth.

And it’s enough to break the spell. She pulls back, cheeks flushed and air tousled, concern weaving across her face. “Damian?”

“It’s—I’m alright, Brown. I’m fine.” Carefully, she caresses his cast with gentle fingers, then his cheek, looking down at him with a glint in her eyes he can’t quite read. “I’m fine.”

“Stephanie,” she says, so low and so soft, he nearly misses it. But then she slides off him, settling onto the mattress and snuggling close to him, her head pressed against his chest, and when she repeats herself, there’s no mistaking it. “You can call me Stephanie, you know.”

Damian swallows a response of ‘because that’s worked out well for me so far’ and instead, reaches up with his good hand to comb his fingers through her hair. “Stephanie,” he tries it out, and fights the urge to smile around the name. She lets out a contented noise in response, and he tries not to sound disappointed when he says, “we didn’t have to stop, you know.” He can already feel the heat thrumming out of her, he knows it would be easy to let it pull him under.

“I know,” she purrs, her breath tickling his neck as she looks up. “But we have all the time in the world to keep going.” She leans closer, presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth, and he catches a radiant smile as she settles back down. The room is beginning to dim.

“I love you,” Stephanie whispers, and her fingers twine carefully around his damaged ones.

“I love you, too,” he responds, and it isn’t long before he gives in, letting her presence lull him to sleep, knowing that this time, she’ll be there when he wakes.


End file.
